facing death « MUSTER YOU
STAY SANE AND SAVAGE Gender activism, intellectual shamanism
Wednesday 29 February 2012
Tuesday 28 February 2012
Monday 27 February 2012
"Women's intuition" and patriarchal veil-making
"Intuition" could mean all sorts of things. The word itself still requires deeper definition.
If we are talking about the capacity to have correct hunches -- what is normally referred to as 'women's intuition" -- then the best explanation/definition I have heard is that this is a category of intuition possessed by all who are in a position of being oppressed. The capacity to anticipate the actions of the "master", to effectively "read his mind" can be a life-preserving skill -- and therefore one worth developing for anyone in an especially vulnerable position in relation to power. So, it is not just women, but others who have been a long time in a position of relative dis-empowerment, who will be likely to develop this skill.
Alternatively, one may wish to consider the question in relation to a different set of ideas. Supposing that "intuition" was the capacity to detect cause and effect, that is something entirely different from the capacity to have the right hunch about what someone will do next.
Certainly, many women have a better grasp of cause and effect than their male counterparts would have. This is because women were historically positioned to relate more directly to the concrete (empirical) world than men are, whereas men were relieved of the everyday burdens of housework and child rearing so as to be able to become, in effect, Philosophical Idealists (people who relate to the world in terms of intangible abstract concepts) to a greater degree.
Philosophical Idealists have the tendency not to see cause and effect as stemming from the relations of the material world. Rather, they experience cause and effect as the influence of one set of abstractions on another. So, for instance, "cultural decline" can be viewed as having the abstract cause of "female insubordination". In such an estimation, neither of the two concepts -- one posited as "cause" and the other as "effect" -- need be given any concrete definition. Also, on an intangible plane, by means of a strange reversal, patriarchal myths have it that male creativity "causes" females to come into being, but never the other way around. This reversal of cause and effect is obvious.
Sunday 26 February 2012
Ape territorialism, or apologetics
I came from a culture which couldn’t have been more different from the one where I moved. The problems were cultural and historical, rather than to do with class status. I was perpetually misread on these bases.
To be a child of a colony isn’t what people thought. There had been a propaganda war fought against us “whites”, so that we appeared to be people who lounged around swimming pools and ordered our black staff to bring us cocktails, whilst we did nothing.
Most of us came from practical classes of Britain — our parents were soldiers or farmers, or in very rare cases, managers of companies. There was no intellectual or artistic strata to our colonial culture. Our society has been a very rustic one indeed.
Also, although my family did have a swimming pool, we lived very frugally. On Saturday at lunch, my father would open one bottle of beer for himself. We would eat a family sized packet of potato chips, which we would only just afford, and share a family sized coca-cola between us. People don’t like to hear that this was all the “luxury” we could afford, because it raises ire and sounds like apologetics. “What about all the millions of black people you personally oppressed? What could they afford?” is the common comeback. Such an angry and resentful attitude shuts down conversation, making it impossible to proceed.
When we came to Australia, in early 1984, we sold everything. We had to start again in every possible sense — psychologically, economically and socially. I didn’t have any new clothes for about five years, although I wasn’t culturally wise enough to realise I needed them. Of course, I had absolutely no social pretensions. I noticed that people were extremely unwilling to help me find my feet, and I later understood this was because I was a ‘colonial’ and so was expected to pay for recompense for that.
I became a little crazy: I turned to fundamentalist Christianity as a way of trying to inject some heart and soul into my new circumstances. This didn’t help at all, as I later discovered so much of the doctrine I’d been learning was intellectually contradictory and at odds with my personality.
I had come from a conservative to right-wing culture and I ought to have stayed in that kind of cultural context where I would have been treated more sympathetically. As I had no idea that I was being discriminated against, and that I was effectively making things worse by not choosing conservative environments that would have welcomed my identity, I gravitated towards liberal intellectual and artistic contexts.
As time went by, I developed chronic fatigue syndrome, a result of not being able to make sense of it all.
Saturday 25 February 2012
Ego, identity and culture shock
In my third year after migrating to Australia, I went to art school at a university. At that stage, I still hadn’t developed any individuality in the form of self awareness. We all gave each other criticism, of course, but I did not understand how the criticism might be relevant to anything I’d done or failed to do. I had no particular criteria to go by. At the same time, I didn’t take any criticism personally, because I didn’t conceptualize that there were alternatives to doing what I had done. I couldn’t say, “Such a person as myself ought to have done better!” because I had in no way — either emotionally or intellectually — theorized what “such a person as myself” was. This was my cultural upbringing, which was tribal, rather than individualist. It meant I was effectively without ego. I wasn’t hurt by anything anyone said, but I didn’t benefit by it, either.
It took me a lot of experimenting and book learning to try to understand what Western egoism was about. I knew I was missing something, because people assumed I was saying things using a sub-text, when I really was, quite simply, blurting things out. Like if I said, “Is this the way we are supposed to do this task?” I really wasn’t criticizing anybody implicitly for the way they were doing something. I was asking a simple question.
I also absolutely didn’t get the idea of identity, at all — that one person could be implicitly criticizing another on the basis of something being wrong with their identity. In retrospect, I think this was happening to me a lot. I was being criticized implicitly because of my white, African (colonial) identity. But I didn’t make much sense of this so naturally I didn’t defend myself either.
I became more stressed because I was way out of my depth in Western culture. When I said, “I’m becoming more and more stressed” (a simple case of blurting something out) people began to say, “You’re making it all about you. You think you’re important. You imagine you’re really great!”
That was weird because I had no such imaginings, nor indeed any concept of my self in relation to the new society.
As I couldn’t understand why my attempts to communicate had to be stymied in every direction I found the situation extremely stressful and bbb...bewildering.
On communication
When I teach, I often say: “I’m not sure what you mean here.”
It’s a very useful thing to say, perhaps the most useful.
I find that a lot of people believe their meanings are self-evident, when this is far from being the case. It’s the kindest act to help them sort out their meanings.
A lot of the problem with understanding whether or not one is communicating is to combat psychological projection in some of its more subtle manifestations.
For instance, I always supposed my university lecturers would know what I was trying to mean because they were highly educated and must necessarily know anything of great importance. I was projecting some kind of omniscience into them that they didn’t have.
In other instances, people will project a whole world view and intellectual structure onto reality that isn’t really there. For instance, they might say, “Being single and being married are totally different things — you know what I mean?” Of course, I won’t know what they mean, since there are all sorts of cultural and historical reasons why my experiences of these would differ from theirs.
It’s always better to doubt that communication has actually taken place than to assume it follows automatic channels.
My insensate self
1. An ego-centered approach to criticism remains a puzzle to me, although I do grasp its meaning, in part. To have to overcome an ego that is both overconfident and insecure (for that state of being pretty much defines the operation of ego itself) seems like culturally limited work.
The language of ego was very foreign to me when growing up, and this differentiates me from those for whom ego was an essential part of their cultural development.
My culture was implicitly tribal, so that we kind of surged or held back as a group, depending on the mood in the wind.My cultural background made me not just insensitive, but oblivious to personal criticism. I really didn’t take it in. Comments about my progress in art, for instance, were momentarily interesting, but I considered them to be ultimately arbitrary and pointless.
I actually had no concept of self-improvement, growing up. I considered life in terms of likes and dislikes, but not in terms of being good or bad at anything in particular. My academic performance reflected this, in that sometimes I performed well in English, sometimes Art, sometimes in an entirely other subject. When I did my school leaving exam (the second year after migrating to Australia), my best mark of all subjects was in maths.
I went on to study Art, but I had no concept of Western individualism. If I’d developed any individual sense of ego by that stage, I would have called my problems “culture shock”. As it was, I had no way to conceptualize why I couldn’t draw any meaning from my situation. On a deep level, I felt like I needed a rite of passage as a transition from childhood to adulthood.
The concept of there being individual egos gradually began to dawn on me. I changed my course from Fine Arts to Humanities, and by the end of the course, I understood individualism a lot better.
I still didn’t understand how completely the ideology of ego was suffused in language in order to give language a sense of having particular reference to the individual who spoke. I felt language was more for pointing out things objectively. However, I found that when I tried to do this, more often than not, people brought the issue back to me, as if to say, “Well that is just what YOU think, but it’s only about you. Your language doesn’t actually point to anything beyond you.”
Ego eventually seemed to me a very limiting factor because of this cultural presupposition that one could not say anything that did not relate primarily, or exclusively to oneself.
2. Et moi, aussi:
Ego isn’t evil -- but it is far easier to control someone who is ego-centered than someone who isn’t. I’m very difficult to control, because my first instinct, when someone criticizes me, is to think, “Surely you are mistaken!”
I do accept criticism and incorporate the knowledge from it very easily, but I also entertain the high likelihood that there are cultural elements of error in many criticisms I received. That’s to do with the assumption that I’m necessarily saying things “about myself”, when I am making observations in an extremely detached manner.
The first fifteen years of my life, I was simply without ego, which doesn’t mean I was without hedonism.
On the good side: a wounded ego can be really useful for keeping one on a particular track. I’ve experienced that before, too. The oyster makes a pearl out of its injury. Such was my PhD.
I’ve reverted to my old ways now, where, having satisfied my intellectual thirsts, I really don’t care what people think of me. This attitude is deeply African. It’s a core part of African resilience, to be able to surge or contract without any reference to ego or identity.
STAY SANE AND SAVAGE Gender activism, intellectual shamanism
On atheism and its current limits
I am an atheist, however, I see such value in Bataille’s conceptualisation of “mystical experience” as “non-knowledge”, since what he really means by that is deep subjectivity.
I’ve had USA citizens positively yelling at me online, because they feel a very profound need to cut loose from the religiosity they are, apparently, surrounded by. The tone of this screaming is that I’m somehow regressing from the standard they would like to set by my own embrace of deep subjectivity.
I do consider their attitudes to be philistine, whilst displaying an inability to separate their own cultural issues (the desire to be done with USA religiosity) from other people’s ideas and experiences.
There really is no harm in growing up and realizing that one’s own personal agenda may differ from others'.
One of these guy’s views was that one must be compelled to embrace the meaninglessness of existence. One wonders what fearsome god he has erected in his head that would command him to embrace “meaninglessness” as a way of proving his atheism. This formulation may seem logically consistent on the surface, but in the absence of a god that actually commands his atheism it makes no sense at all.
I’ve had USA citizens positively yelling at me online, because they feel a very profound need to cut loose from the religiosity they are, apparently, surrounded by. The tone of this screaming is that I’m somehow regressing from the standard they would like to set by my own embrace of deep subjectivity.
I do consider their attitudes to be philistine, whilst displaying an inability to separate their own cultural issues (the desire to be done with USA religiosity) from other people’s ideas and experiences.
There really is no harm in growing up and realizing that one’s own personal agenda may differ from others'.
One of these guy’s views was that one must be compelled to embrace the meaninglessness of existence. One wonders what fearsome god he has erected in his head that would command him to embrace “meaninglessness” as a way of proving his atheism. This formulation may seem logically consistent on the surface, but in the absence of a god that actually commands his atheism it makes no sense at all.
PAUL CHIZUZE – DISAPPEARED
David Coltart
I am very distressed about the disappearance of a good friend and colleague, Paul Chizuze, on the 8th February 2012. Paul was one of the first paralegals we trained at the Bulawayo Legal Projects Centre in the 1980s. He has been one of the most consistent human rights activists I know - a man of great compassion and integrity. The following statement has been issued by his colleagues and friends. Please would all those living in Zimbabwe and its neighbouring states look out for the vehicle described as it may be the best way of locating him. I have posted Paul's photograph below.
PAUL CHIZUZE – DISAPPEARED
A long established Zimbabwean human rights activist has been missing since 8 pm on Wednesday 8 February 2012.
Over the last three decades, Paul has been either employed by, or active with, the Legal Resources Foundation, Amani Trust Matabeleland, The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, ZimRights, Churches in Bulawayo, CivNet, and Masakhaneni Trust. Paul has worked tirelessly as a paralegal to track activists in jail and offer them support. Paul was among those who maintained the campaign to uncover the truth of what happened to Patrick Nabanyama after his abduction and disappearance in 2000, and has selflessly worked to expose human rights abuses in the last decade.
WHERE IS PAUL? He allegedly left his home around 8 pm on 8th February, and what happened after this remains a mystery. He may have been murdered, hijacked or abducted by parties unknown.
His car, a white twin cab Nissan Hardbody Reg Number ACJ 3446 is also missing.
Paul has searched for other activists and never given up. We appeal to the police to pursue all the possibilities, and we in civics vow to maintain a campaign to find Paul wherever he may be
Friday 24 February 2012
Doubling: the basis for intellectual development
To think abstractly means to stop paying attention directly to those things that are going on in the immediacy.
It's structurally based on the capacity to separate oneself from oneself and to have two senses of the self: the immediate, concrete one and the one that is defined by abstract terminology or "spirit".
It's structurally based on the capacity to separate oneself from oneself and to have two senses of the self: the immediate, concrete one and the one that is defined by abstract terminology or "spirit".
Thursday 23 February 2012
self therapy: psychoanalysis and shamanism
Nietzsche was my “psychoanalyst”, at least in the first instance. The limitations of Nietzsche are that he does not deal with the question of patriarchy. Like many a contemporary male, he sees no particular problem with this in terms of causing mental health issues. He is prone to essentialise gender.
Marechera was my second, much deeper and more self-aware “psychoanalyst”. He deals with issues both of race and gender. One understands through him how society is constructed so that both race and gender constrain as well as determine psychological development. Marechera comes from my culture, which is also more primitive than that of European of contemporary Western culture. My problems were sourced in this culture, not in Western culture, which meant that Western therapists had not the background that would have enabled them to get to the bottom of any of my concerns. As a result, there was meaningless talking around the issue — or, if pressed concerning the urgency of finally addressing my issues, the therapists would become extremely abusive. Marechera, Bataille and Nietzsche, in the reverse order, taught me about a different way of being, which I call shamanism.
- Shamanism is a mode that mixes the recognition of extreme trauma with a mode of speaking that is extremely ironic. It’s not to everybody’s taste and is indeed confusing, since most people believe that genuine injustices ought to be taken seriously and with the greatest sense of moral deliberation.
- Shamans are, however, “wrecked out of their wounds”, which means that they've reached such a base level of extreme skepticism about morality, and its capacity to do any good, that they can only treat the world ironically, henceforth.
SHAMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY
Psychoanalysis and shamanism share an interest in the same subject, the psyche, and yet they speak very different languages -- often using almost the same words. To begin with, shamanism's implicit point of reference is always "nature", whereas that of psychoanalysis is always "society".
Psychoanalysis is implicitly moral in terms of its goal of producing adaptation to societal norms, but shamanism views experiences in a morally neutral way. One can see how observations made in the spirit of shamanism can appear in a totally different light in terms of psychoanalysis. Nature is amoral, so observations made about relationships and experiences in light of this point of reference are morally neutral. Social organisation, however, is based on principles of morality. Relationships and experiences are therefore subject to moral examination and interrogation in order to produce conformity.
The moral neutrality of shamanism can be shown in the fact that shamans use sexual energy for self-transformation, but psychoanalyst Donald Meltzer maintains that orgasm without intercourse leads only into a realm of unproductive, indeed pathological fantasy.
SHAMANISM IS STRUCTURALLY IRONIC
Shamanism sets itself at odds with the fear of transgression, therefor eit is always ironic. Nietzsche's irony is shamanistic, in that it is entirely sourced in his awareness that there is an essential difference between humanity and nature: the body of Nietzsche's work is an attempt to find different ways to view these differences and to acknowledge them as part of our general awareness.
My writing is also never to be framed directly according to issues relating to society, but is always to be understood more directly in a shamanistic vein.
In other words, it is quite beneath me to try to argue against historical events or facts as they have happened. My concern is always to connect the dots between seemingly unrelated aspects of experience. These links I suggest must first be grasped and understood, prior to making of any topic a moral issue.
Wednesday 22 February 2012
One review (my recovered soul)
"My story starts in the womb of innocence- a cozy and comfortable womb, as every womb is, and ought to be."
Thus begins an intriguing and at times heartbreaking account of a childhood that is in so many ways like any other childhood, but that is in as many ways unique. Jennifer Armstrong's account of coming into consciousness during the early years after the Unilateral Declaration of Independence by Ian Smith, the then prime minister of Rhodesia in 1965, is a personal tale of living and existing with a status quo which she played no part in shaping and against which she was powerless. The adults were powerless, however what makes this story so compelling is the utter powerlessness of the child. It is the powerlessness of the adults in the story, particularly her father, which she captures with amazing prowess, yet using simple, child-like language. She is then able to demonstrate how this sense of impotence and loss of control and adherence to Christian ideology, which he dared not question, created a war within him, a raging minstrel which spewed its heat over her, the female child who was different because she was curious and dared to question. The young Jennifer turns inward, becoming quiet and as still as possible in order to avoid the unpredictable, explosive outbursts of anger from her father. However, it seems at times as though her very existence is an affront to his authority and a source of great irritation.
Armstrong's discussion of the war of liberation of Zimbabwe from colonial rule provides the context to the complex emotions and the visceral fear that adults experienced and how these in turn impacted on her psyche. She chronicles events in a circuitous manner much like the memory, which does not always recall events and experiences in a linear fashion. One might call it an emotional geography, in which nature, events and subjects are all contexts for emotional expression. Yet one is truck by the richness of her descriptions of Nature, which she calls the "umbilical cord" to which she was attached.
Amstrong's family eventually emigrates to Australia after her father resigns his job as a lecturer at one of Harare's tertiary educational institutions. Life in the new country is described in emotional terms and the teenager Jennifer wrestles with the loss of Nature as her primal source of energy and happiness, paternal unpredictability and issues of sexism and patriarchy, which she meets head on with a defiance and determination that brings her to a point of personal emancipation.
Armstrong's voice is very consistent but at times petulant; a child's voice that is focused totally and exclusively on herself, with events and circumstances always being relative to herself. This is the case throughout the entire narrative, which gives it a cohesiveness, which its esoteric style might otherwise have threatened. The esoteric quality is what makes the story such a delight to delve into. It demands that the reader delve in with an open mind as well with as an open heart. It compels the reader to think deeply, all the while enjoying a gently cruising pace, giving pause for reflection on one's own inner child and the innocence, which gives the young Jennifer the gift of exacting immense pleasure and joy from the simplest of things like jumping into a cool swimming pool on a hot afternoon.
This is a story told in a unique way. It is solid. What makes it a gem is the author's audacity to tell of her experiences in a way that she wanted to, in a voice with which she is completely comfortable. Her writing, however is not inherently emotional but it captures the emotions of Jennifer the child. Armstrong displays discipline and objectivity in writing about her emotions at that time in an ironic and at times dispassionate way, almost as though telling someone else's story.
By taking a risk with experimental form, Armstrong has demonstrated what a memoir ought to be - a means of recollection, told in a manner in with which she is at home. This in turn enables her readers to "feel at home" in her narrative.
Excellent read Jennifer! I am hoping that there is more where this came from!
Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende
Thus begins an intriguing and at times heartbreaking account of a childhood that is in so many ways like any other childhood, but that is in as many ways unique. Jennifer Armstrong's account of coming into consciousness during the early years after the Unilateral Declaration of Independence by Ian Smith, the then prime minister of Rhodesia in 1965, is a personal tale of living and existing with a status quo which she played no part in shaping and against which she was powerless. The adults were powerless, however what makes this story so compelling is the utter powerlessness of the child. It is the powerlessness of the adults in the story, particularly her father, which she captures with amazing prowess, yet using simple, child-like language. She is then able to demonstrate how this sense of impotence and loss of control and adherence to Christian ideology, which he dared not question, created a war within him, a raging minstrel which spewed its heat over her, the female child who was different because she was curious and dared to question. The young Jennifer turns inward, becoming quiet and as still as possible in order to avoid the unpredictable, explosive outbursts of anger from her father. However, it seems at times as though her very existence is an affront to his authority and a source of great irritation.
Armstrong's discussion of the war of liberation of Zimbabwe from colonial rule provides the context to the complex emotions and the visceral fear that adults experienced and how these in turn impacted on her psyche. She chronicles events in a circuitous manner much like the memory, which does not always recall events and experiences in a linear fashion. One might call it an emotional geography, in which nature, events and subjects are all contexts for emotional expression. Yet one is truck by the richness of her descriptions of Nature, which she calls the "umbilical cord" to which she was attached.
Amstrong's family eventually emigrates to Australia after her father resigns his job as a lecturer at one of Harare's tertiary educational institutions. Life in the new country is described in emotional terms and the teenager Jennifer wrestles with the loss of Nature as her primal source of energy and happiness, paternal unpredictability and issues of sexism and patriarchy, which she meets head on with a defiance and determination that brings her to a point of personal emancipation.
Armstrong's voice is very consistent but at times petulant; a child's voice that is focused totally and exclusively on herself, with events and circumstances always being relative to herself. This is the case throughout the entire narrative, which gives it a cohesiveness, which its esoteric style might otherwise have threatened. The esoteric quality is what makes the story such a delight to delve into. It demands that the reader delve in with an open mind as well with as an open heart. It compels the reader to think deeply, all the while enjoying a gently cruising pace, giving pause for reflection on one's own inner child and the innocence, which gives the young Jennifer the gift of exacting immense pleasure and joy from the simplest of things like jumping into a cool swimming pool on a hot afternoon.
This is a story told in a unique way. It is solid. What makes it a gem is the author's audacity to tell of her experiences in a way that she wanted to, in a voice with which she is completely comfortable. Her writing, however is not inherently emotional but it captures the emotions of Jennifer the child. Armstrong displays discipline and objectivity in writing about her emotions at that time in an ironic and at times dispassionate way, almost as though telling someone else's story.
By taking a risk with experimental form, Armstrong has demonstrated what a memoir ought to be - a means of recollection, told in a manner in with which she is at home. This in turn enables her readers to "feel at home" in her narrative.
Excellent read Jennifer! I am hoping that there is more where this came from!
Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende
Tuesday 21 February 2012
Georges Bataille
One aspect of his thought that seems to enrage a lot of people is his idea of mystical experience, which he expresses as a form of ‘non-knowledge” that nonetheless has a structure. He begins some of his papers with the suggestion that he will now proceed to talk about non-knowledge and that he will not be able to describe it in language, because language itself is about knowledge and what the non-knowledge conveys is definitively non-linguistic.
He says, “I have failed to convey my sense of non-knowledge all the previous times I’ve tried to explain it and I will fail this time, too.”
You’ve got to love the French and their sense of irony. There is nothing French without irony.
At the same time, this kind of irony makes some non-French people very angry and also very suspicious. “What is he trying to do? Is he a crypto-fascist?” they murmur under their breaths.
TRUTHS
Just because I hold a certain (subjective) belief doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s factually true and applies to things other than myself as well. There is a clear difference between two beliefs (sushi is delicious, and God is the father of all).
There is a difference between factual truths and subjective truths only in the sense that in Western society, factual truths lay claim to authority in a way that subjective truths do not. “God is the father of all”, as a factual truth, means, “You’d better listen to what he says in this here holy script, or you’re in trouble.”
The Western created antagonism between objectivity and subjectivity is unworkable, in practice, because it functions in a mode of sado-masochism: i.e. “Your subjective truth will submit to my objective truth, or else you’re a crazy, unreasonable, hysterical person, whom I will proceed to step all over!”
One might throw a Bible at someone and condemn them to hell on the basis that “God is the father of all” is an objective truth, but one would never throw sushi at someone for disagreeing with one’s subjective truth.
“Objective truths” seem to breed bad characters, for the most part. In my view, it is better to hold an objective truth as something that is ‘merely’ subjective than the other way around.
Draft Chapter 6: my father's memoir
In those days, all the men went for army training soon after reaching the age of 17. I was apprehensive of this, so one day at work, I phoned the army and told them to send me the call up papers to get it order and done with. I didn't want it hanging over my head. So, they sent me my papers. My boss at work was seething mad. He said you should have asked me. I was an apprentice in graphic reproduction. My boss was a nutcase anyway. He was quite an old guy. He got into a car and drove it down the road straight into a train. The train flicked the car aside and he got a broken arm, broken leg and so forth. He was quite a nice guy, in reality. He used to look after me. I can actually visualise Bert Driver now. I had to report in a few weeks.
It seemed to me that I wasn't really fit enough for the army, so I started a training regime. I started running. I was running on the spot in my bedroom, doing press-ups and the like at night. I set myself goals to improve. Two weeks later, my papers arrived with instructions for boarding a train in Salisbury station. I reported to the station nine o'clock in the evening, I found my compartment. One of my travelling companions was a young man whose name was Forster. Forster was completely inebriated when he got on the train. He was not nice company when drunk. I got no sleep the whole night and arrived in Bulawayo six o'clock the next morning worn out. Somebody ordered us off the train and we assembled as a loose group on the platform. We were told to take our luggage and put it on a truck they had bought to pick us up. It was a cold morning and the truck offered no protection from the wind.
An hour later we drove into Llewelyn barracks. We were instructed to collect our bags out the truck, to get inline, and to start to march along the road. Some of the suitcases were very heavy and the guys couldn't cope. The guy next to me was in tears and I only just coped with mine. We took them up to the quartermaster's store, which was actually an old aircraft hangar. Llewelyn barracks had been an air force training base during the second world war. Here we were lined up and made to fill in your enrolment forms. We were then issued with uniforms, according to the army's philosophy of one size fits all. There were three sets of boots, which were necessary to try on to make sure they fit. These were hockey boots, weapon training boots which were rubber soled leather boots, with leather like orange peel, then we also had stick boots, which were dress boots for parade. These had half inch soles with metal studs in them, so that someone walking down the road with them would make a hell of row. They also had half a horseshoe shape fixed to the heel.
We then were marched down to some barrack rooms, with ten beds in a row on each side with a tall boy, a tall locker, on each side. Then we had the unpleasant task of cleaning the kit. People who hadn't bothered to clean it properly had used some of the kit. Rhodesia army kit was standard British army kit, including webbing, two small packs, two kidney pouches, one big pack, all in extra durable canvass. It was required to be blankoed. This meant being covered in khaki coloured mud from tablets that came in a packet. All the webbing and packs had to be covered.
Some recruits developed a rash from the blanko. So just as we got all the kits done, the army changed their blanko to a formula that was much more greasy. We had to redo everything. Two months later, they changed the blanko again. All the brass buckles had to be polished until you could see your face in them. Then, one day, a staff corporal sat down amongst us and demanded a pair of stick boots from someone. He heated a spoon with a blow torch and applied it to the leather, which ironed out the dimples. When he'd got the dimples out, he applied a layer of polish. Then, with a piece of cotton wool, soaked in water, he wiped it over the leather, until it began to shine like patent leather. This could only be done with one form of polish, Kiwi polish. In no time, we'd emptied the shops of this form of polish. This kind of polish was very fragile, though. If you're drilling on parade, and the one bloke puts his heel on the tip of your shoe, that can be enough to put you on a charge.
It seemed to me that I wasn't really fit enough for the army, so I started a training regime. I started running. I was running on the spot in my bedroom, doing press-ups and the like at night. I set myself goals to improve. Two weeks later, my papers arrived with instructions for boarding a train in Salisbury station. I reported to the station nine o'clock in the evening, I found my compartment. One of my travelling companions was a young man whose name was Forster. Forster was completely inebriated when he got on the train. He was not nice company when drunk. I got no sleep the whole night and arrived in Bulawayo six o'clock the next morning worn out. Somebody ordered us off the train and we assembled as a loose group on the platform. We were told to take our luggage and put it on a truck they had bought to pick us up. It was a cold morning and the truck offered no protection from the wind.
An hour later we drove into Llewelyn barracks. We were instructed to collect our bags out the truck, to get inline, and to start to march along the road. Some of the suitcases were very heavy and the guys couldn't cope. The guy next to me was in tears and I only just coped with mine. We took them up to the quartermaster's store, which was actually an old aircraft hangar. Llewelyn barracks had been an air force training base during the second world war. Here we were lined up and made to fill in your enrolment forms. We were then issued with uniforms, according to the army's philosophy of one size fits all. There were three sets of boots, which were necessary to try on to make sure they fit. These were hockey boots, weapon training boots which were rubber soled leather boots, with leather like orange peel, then we also had stick boots, which were dress boots for parade. These had half inch soles with metal studs in them, so that someone walking down the road with them would make a hell of row. They also had half a horseshoe shape fixed to the heel.
We then were marched down to some barrack rooms, with ten beds in a row on each side with a tall boy, a tall locker, on each side. Then we had the unpleasant task of cleaning the kit. People who hadn't bothered to clean it properly had used some of the kit. Rhodesia army kit was standard British army kit, including webbing, two small packs, two kidney pouches, one big pack, all in extra durable canvass. It was required to be blankoed. This meant being covered in khaki coloured mud from tablets that came in a packet. All the webbing and packs had to be covered.
Some recruits developed a rash from the blanko. So just as we got all the kits done, the army changed their blanko to a formula that was much more greasy. We had to redo everything. Two months later, they changed the blanko again. All the brass buckles had to be polished until you could see your face in them. Then, one day, a staff corporal sat down amongst us and demanded a pair of stick boots from someone. He heated a spoon with a blow torch and applied it to the leather, which ironed out the dimples. When he'd got the dimples out, he applied a layer of polish. Then, with a piece of cotton wool, soaked in water, he wiped it over the leather, until it began to shine like patent leather. This could only be done with one form of polish, Kiwi polish. In no time, we'd emptied the shops of this form of polish. This kind of polish was very fragile, though. If you're drilling on parade, and the one bloke puts his heel on the tip of your shoe, that can be enough to put you on a charge.
Monday 20 February 2012
Are atheists ideological?
Sadly, this is often true about atheists, even from my personal experience. Those who claim enlightenment via science or philosophy are really mostly interested in power relations.
For instance, long have I delved into the philosophy of Nietzsche. It’s a philosophy of liberation from religious binds, but it also upholds the extreme importance of subjective experience. Certainly, it embraces science, but via subjectivity. For instance, Nietzsche’s THE GAY SCIENCE (not in that sense, silly!) describes how one should base one’s learning of the world on testing one’s hypotheses about it practically. One experiments with one’s life in order to find out what is true or not.
So, this is easy enough for me to do. I have little in the way of ties that bind my to convention or society, having entirely lost my society and my place in it by the age of 16. On the positive side, that makes me free to experiment.
However, I’ve never met such opposition to this approach from any sort of person as I have from those who claimed to be “Nietzschean”, who were “philosophers” and so on.
These were the ones who absolutely couldn’t stand me finding things out of my own accord.
They castigated me for this in all sorts of ways. I’ve been called some really horrible terms for thinking for myself and engaging in free experimentation.
I concluded from this that people are not interested in very much about the world, but are keen to embrace a dogma. They want to feel good about themselves, but without any cost to themselves. They want to do it via ideological self-justification.
So, certainly, atheists are not necessarily superior to organised religious folk in any special way. They tend to both want the same sorts of things in life — power over others and self-vindication through ideology.
Sunday 19 February 2012
affinities between Nietzsche and shamanism:
The "natural" mind that is the shaman's innermost mind, is that which differentiates between the self that wills something, and social conventions, and does not become a victim of social conditioning in any long-term way. It is this self that operates most naturally, because it is conditioned to accept a psychological mode of plasticity, and is thus free to perceive that which, in society, becomes rigid though psychological stress -- ie. that which is not this self.The "natural" self has light feet-- like the shaman's "spirit" in the world of spirits:
All that is good is instinct -- and hence easy, necessary, free. Laboriousness is an objection: the god is typically different from the hero. (In my language: light feet are the first attribute of divinity.)
The shaman crosses between two worlds -- between psychological fluidity (a healthy plasticity of self-identity) and rigidity (the inevitability of psychological structures that conform with social expectations in society at large).
The shamanic type crosses as spirit (one who has resources of huge psychological plasticity) and encounters energy as force -- indeed, as other forms of spirit -- and thus moves very easily and on light feet "as spirit".
It is possible to do this whilst observing the visible forms of solidified energy (rigid psychological forces expressed as sociological forms) that have become fixed into position. The energy forces of those (and of the parts of self) that have become fixed into social roles register in physics terms, as "matter". But usable energy remains liquid: "spirit" or the force to do something.
A shamanism reference in Nietzsche (from Zarathustra):
I love him who keeps back no drop of spirit for himself, but wants to be the spirit of his virtue entirely: thus he steps as spirit over the bridge.
From Eliade:
According to the "World Myth" found in many cultures, the earliest stage of human life was one of total harmony and wisdom. The planet was connected to the sky, which was always a place of light and the focus of human devotion, by the bridge, tree, mountain etc., thought to be the "axis mundi", the center of the world. "Humans could effortlessly communicate with the gods above."[Eliade] They could pass between heaven and earth without obstacle because there was no death yet. This easy communication was cut off by a "fall" from grace similar to that in the Christian bible. Since this "fall", the only way to cross the bridge is in "spirit", ie. as dead or in ecstasy. This bridge is full of obstacles, demons and monsters, and the way is as narrow as a razors edge. The crossing is dangerous and only privileged persons succeed in passing over it in their lifetime. " In the myths, the passage emphatically testifies that he who succeeds in accomplishing it, has transcended the human condition; he is a shaman, a hero, or a spirit and indeed this passage can be accomplished by only one who is spirit. "[Eliade] The shaman in crossing by way of his ecstatic journey proves he is spirit, and attempts to restore the "communicability" that originally existed between this world and heaven. What the shaman succeeds in doing today through ecstasy, could be done at the dawn of all beings "in concreto" ie. without trance, in the physical body. 'The shaman reestablishes the primordial condition of all mankind."[Eliade]
http://easternhealingarts.com/Articles/shamanism.html
shamanistic healing and ecstasy
My “religion” is intellectual shamanism -- a form of atheism, since I believe that religious experiences occur only in the brain.
Intellectual shamanism maintains that we should try to do without the scaffolding of civilization as much as possible. This is by no means because civilization is evil. To the contrary -- but one should not rely on systems of support because there are nearly always hidden power interests that would “assist” you at the cost of your subjectivity.
Intellectual shamanism upholds one’s subjectivity as a pearl beyond price. Lose that and one loses one’s meaning. It is too easy to lose aspects of one’s subjectivity through contemporary pharmaceuticals, through submission to authorities, religious and secular, and through playing safe.
One must meet one’s fears, including fear of death, to be free from unseen binds. The recovery of oneself through facing one's worst fears involves the ecstasy of shamanistic healing.
The decline of psychological depth
Contemporary culture, including intellectual culture, appears to have taken a very philistine turn, whereby everything that is written must necessarily be taken in its most literal sense. Therefore you get entirely stupid interpretations, such as the one that my memoir is about “getting things wrong”. Sure it is, if you lack a sense of humor and are not ready to take a distant stance towards political correctness.
A lot of Jesus’ recommendations are thoroughly shamanistic in that he elevates subjective knowledge over official, authoritarian or materialistic perspectives. This is not to say the subjective knowledge Christians advocate is necessarily wholesome and good, but I'm talking about the abstract form of it. This attention to the value of experience is the core of Christianity that is worth saving -- the patriarchal stuff, not so much.
One absolutely has to be able to take things in a non-literal sense and sometimes in an ironic sense to be any kind of higher human being. Literalness is for those who are still struggling.
Nietzsche, for instance, interpreted literally, ends up being a boorish, misogynist pig with very little to say for himself. If you interpret “masculinity” to mean “males” and “femininity” to mean “women”, then we are left with a prescription for a very rigid social order, where men go about and act heroically and women can’t figure out what they hell that means, because women are too base and uncomprehending to be able to figure out much of anything.
At the same time, there is an equal and opposite danger in not realizing that when religiously based politicians pronounce, “We are loving women best by restricting their freedoms,” they are quite literally being vulgar and contemptuous of women’s intelligence, whilst using a religious veil to cover their ugly demeanor.
Perhaps the resort to literalness is a natural result of people feeling so often tricked. Dorpat says that one resorts to a very literal frame of mind when one senses a relationship has become abusive. One is no longer open enough with oneself or others to be able to dig deeply into one's psyche.
A lot of Jesus’ recommendations are thoroughly shamanistic in that he elevates subjective knowledge over official, authoritarian or materialistic perspectives. This is not to say the subjective knowledge Christians advocate is necessarily wholesome and good, but I'm talking about the abstract form of it. This attention to the value of experience is the core of Christianity that is worth saving -- the patriarchal stuff, not so much.
One absolutely has to be able to take things in a non-literal sense and sometimes in an ironic sense to be any kind of higher human being. Literalness is for those who are still struggling.
Nietzsche, for instance, interpreted literally, ends up being a boorish, misogynist pig with very little to say for himself. If you interpret “masculinity” to mean “males” and “femininity” to mean “women”, then we are left with a prescription for a very rigid social order, where men go about and act heroically and women can’t figure out what they hell that means, because women are too base and uncomprehending to be able to figure out much of anything.
At the same time, there is an equal and opposite danger in not realizing that when religiously based politicians pronounce, “We are loving women best by restricting their freedoms,” they are quite literally being vulgar and contemptuous of women’s intelligence, whilst using a religious veil to cover their ugly demeanor.
Perhaps the resort to literalness is a natural result of people feeling so often tricked. Dorpat says that one resorts to a very literal frame of mind when one senses a relationship has become abusive. One is no longer open enough with oneself or others to be able to dig deeply into one's psyche.
Patriarchal symbolism, patriarchal projections
Patriarchal projections might not appear obviously what they are -- which is to say, projections -- just because they often rely upon a framing device to change the meaning of an event, depending upon whether the subject is male or female. What is projected it the idea of female inferiority, which seems to be confirmed by any unusual event in the life of any woman.
The way I have found this to work: if a woman struggles against something, the fact of a struggle one is a mark of her failure. (If a man similarly struggles against incredible odds, then that is often seen as a mark of his will to overcome those odds.)
What this patriarchal logic adds up to is a general social perspective that a woman who struggles against the odds is a failure. She struggles because life appears to overwhelm her. (Actually, patriarchal hegemony can often be overwhelming, depending on one's particular circumstances.) For one who has more patriarchy to deal with than maybe others do, failing to struggle would not lead to any success, either -- and necessarily so, since those who do not struggle against powerful enemies do not end up making anything of their lives.
All the same, patriarchy is not an ideology that distinguishes between just and unjust situations. For women who suffer under a great deal of patriarchal control, the fatigue after having exerted oneself in an extraordinary way is viewed as signifying the failure of one's whole enterprise, which is to survive as a whole human being. Patriarchal ideology requires that one loses, either way (by struggling against it or by not struggling). It thus enforces standards of mediocrity for women.
As we can see, then, a mediocre woman is the only kind of woman logically acceptable under the patriarchal system. Yet, even this ostensibly "acceptable" woman -- this patriarchal, mediocre woman -- will ultimately be rejected by the patriarchal system, for it's clear that acquiescence to a system that defines your character as mediocre makes one, if anything, superlatively mediocre. This is a fact sensed by the brighter of the patriarchal types themselves, who intuit that any woman accommodating herself to their wishes cannot have much character or substance.
From a patriarchal perspective no woman is anything but mediocre. That view is behind the self-justification of patriarchal value systems: we dominate you because you are inferior and we are superior to you. Furthermore, the circumstances we have imposed on you -- lack of access to effective contraception, for instance -- will assure that nothing like an intellect actually develops.
Of course, it's the "femininity" of the ideological priest that he's wishing to cast into her -- specifically his sexual devils. Be assured that this circular reasoning leads to more of the same.
Friday 17 February 2012
Returning to nature: It's not what you think.
February 17, 2012 at 5:35 pm | #24
| Quote
bloggerclarissa :
“I would have not trouble with a feminist identification with nature if they were only to take that project seriously — go and live out in the Amazonian rain forest for a few weeks; make like Bear Grylls. Actually, there is a lot that can be learned from various kinds of association with nature.”
- One of the scholars I’m talking about (a woman) arrived at a conclusion that it is easier for female political prisoners to withstand torture because they are closer to the animal world and don’t experience torture as acutely as men do. And she didn’t notice how this line of reasoning could be used for political terror. This is a person from Argentina, where there is a history of this kind of terror. If that’s where essentialist gender thinking takes one, who needs it?
Indeed — but obviously I was also being at least partially ironic. What I’m getting at is there is no harm in individuals, like your Argentinian, going back to Argentina and offering herself up to the prisons there for experimentation. This is one way to test the veracity of one’s ideology and find out how useful it is.
This is what I am suggesting about nature being a very useful learning tool. It’s not going to teach you anything like you imagine, but that’s not the fault of nature.
I’m sorry. Everything I say is ironic. You will find nothing on my blog that isn’t at least partially ironic. This is the Nietzschean and Bataille school of philosophy, where nothing is really what it seems and you always have to watch out where you step.
Paradox of the psyche: at sea
A shaman is one whose life has been ‘shipwrecked’. The victim cast to sea, only to sink to the depths and find hidden treasure. Who would believe in this treasure, or that the meaning of the shipwreck could have turned out to be something positive? It is this paradox that we are dealing with, for instance in terms of the productive power of Zimbabwean author, Dambudzo Marechera, who was a contemporary shaman, by necessity, and not by conscious choice.
There results a self that is somewhat of a tragedian, which laments the original sense of self and its feelings of security aboard a boat with definite direction and an already furnished life-purpose, but beside that self is another "self" that has somehow triumphed, not despite of – but because of – the chaos. This is the doubling of the self that we constantly meet within Marechera’s work. The fact that the ‘tragedy’ of one’s life produced unexpected benefits is harder to express in direct, everyday language, since it goes against the grain of rational expectations. This knowledge pertains to the ‘shamanic” aspect of the self, which gives the subject access to a level of reality generally denied by those who would be uncomfortable with being "wrecked" out of their wounds -- and who does not have wounds, from one's familial upbringing or from work and schooling and so on?
N.B. Nietzsche experienced traumatic awakenings when his father died suddenly, an event depicted by the image of the howling dog in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Why does Nietzsche make this image central to his sense of "eternal recurrence" and self-overcoming? How does one say, "Yes," to one's life's traumas?
There results a self that is somewhat of a tragedian, which laments the original sense of self and its feelings of security aboard a boat with definite direction and an already furnished life-purpose, but beside that self is another "self" that has somehow triumphed, not despite of – but because of – the chaos. This is the doubling of the self that we constantly meet within Marechera’s work. The fact that the ‘tragedy’ of one’s life produced unexpected benefits is harder to express in direct, everyday language, since it goes against the grain of rational expectations. This knowledge pertains to the ‘shamanic” aspect of the self, which gives the subject access to a level of reality generally denied by those who would be uncomfortable with being "wrecked" out of their wounds -- and who does not have wounds, from one's familial upbringing or from work and schooling and so on?
N.B. Nietzsche experienced traumatic awakenings when his father died suddenly, an event depicted by the image of the howling dog in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Why does Nietzsche make this image central to his sense of "eternal recurrence" and self-overcoming? How does one say, "Yes," to one's life's traumas?
Thursday 16 February 2012
Repost: earlier ideas about psychology and the benefits and pitfalls of regression therapy
First, a qualification: I'm with Jungians in accepting that not everything about "pre-Oedipal" thinking, including magical thinking, is necessarily entirely bad, false and regressive.
After all, if we accept the premise that at the earliest stages of childhood development, we all experienced the world in this way at once stage. To then hold that early childhood a purely negative or purely psychotic state is to impugn it. Rather, it is more logical to imagine that early childhood gives us the raw material for becoming adults, including the liquidity that enables us to transform from a raw state of infancy to particular cultural expressions of adulthood.
So, there is likely a creative and productive potential to pre-Oedipal thinking. Yet, if adults want to harness this force effectively, they must do it by doubling their consciousness, so that a more mature mindset does not lose complete control of those aspects of the self that remain irrational. Unless this particular sense of shamanistic doubling is enacted, we would be left with unharnessed and wholly unconscious pre-Oedipal states -- which would then be destructive and simply regressive.
Ujheley gives a great explication of pre-oedipal states. Her writing and other texts I have investigated, suggest that part of this regressive mode of thinking involves an attitude that words, once said, are irrevokable, having an effect on others that we would equate with the same force of revelatory truth. Thus, from this regressive perspective there is no human fallibility, no possibility of struggling within an arena which includes both truth and error. Rather, by speaking my words, I make them definitively TRUE.
This literalism in interpreting and speaking is of course extreme and odd. Ideas do not become TRUE just because we speak them. Yet, from the perspective of one who sees and experiences the world through the pre-Oedipal modality, all words spoken have what seems to be the FORCE of truth -- just because he or she has no internal means for defending against them. Without the means to fend off other people's judgements, for instance by putting them in perspective, (since emotional perspective is exactly that which one who is stuck at a pre-Oedipal level lacks), words have the quality of being truths that one must compulsively accept. Thus a word, once spoken, can never be modified, or shown to have been in error. Once it has been spoken, it has become eternally true.
Fundamentalist Christians often seem to process information in this way. From my personal experience, this mode of consciousness also happens to be a feature of right-wingers' political consciousness in a lot of ways. Indeed, the whole vulgar ideology expressed by the Bushite neo-conservatives, that "The reality based community only researches reality, whereas we are the ones who actually create it," would seem to stem directly from a regressive pre-Oedipal consciousness, whereby merely speaking your ideas suffices to turn them into intractable truths. This is pre-Oedipal (regressive) modality of consciousness.
After all, if we accept the premise that at the earliest stages of childhood development, we all experienced the world in this way at once stage. To then hold that early childhood a purely negative or purely psychotic state is to impugn it. Rather, it is more logical to imagine that early childhood gives us the raw material for becoming adults, including the liquidity that enables us to transform from a raw state of infancy to particular cultural expressions of adulthood.
So, there is likely a creative and productive potential to pre-Oedipal thinking. Yet, if adults want to harness this force effectively, they must do it by doubling their consciousness, so that a more mature mindset does not lose complete control of those aspects of the self that remain irrational. Unless this particular sense of shamanistic doubling is enacted, we would be left with unharnessed and wholly unconscious pre-Oedipal states -- which would then be destructive and simply regressive.
Ujheley gives a great explication of pre-oedipal states. Her writing and other texts I have investigated, suggest that part of this regressive mode of thinking involves an attitude that words, once said, are irrevokable, having an effect on others that we would equate with the same force of revelatory truth. Thus, from this regressive perspective there is no human fallibility, no possibility of struggling within an arena which includes both truth and error. Rather, by speaking my words, I make them definitively TRUE.
This literalism in interpreting and speaking is of course extreme and odd. Ideas do not become TRUE just because we speak them. Yet, from the perspective of one who sees and experiences the world through the pre-Oedipal modality, all words spoken have what seems to be the FORCE of truth -- just because he or she has no internal means for defending against them. Without the means to fend off other people's judgements, for instance by putting them in perspective, (since emotional perspective is exactly that which one who is stuck at a pre-Oedipal level lacks), words have the quality of being truths that one must compulsively accept. Thus a word, once spoken, can never be modified, or shown to have been in error. Once it has been spoken, it has become eternally true.
Fundamentalist Christians often seem to process information in this way. From my personal experience, this mode of consciousness also happens to be a feature of right-wingers' political consciousness in a lot of ways. Indeed, the whole vulgar ideology expressed by the Bushite neo-conservatives, that "The reality based community only researches reality, whereas we are the ones who actually create it," would seem to stem directly from a regressive pre-Oedipal consciousness, whereby merely speaking your ideas suffices to turn them into intractable truths. This is pre-Oedipal (regressive) modality of consciousness.
If I'm smiling
Women don't automatically have a character structure that they can't bring to the public eye.
What I am is what I show.
Wednesday 15 February 2012
Some differences between postmodernism and intellectual shamanism
1. Postmodernism is philosophical idealism, which maintains that changing concepts changes reality. Intellectual shamanism holds that concepts obscure reality and that one must, for periods at a time, get rid of concepts altogether, in order to see to what degree we live altogether too narrowly, on the basis of conceptualization of reality.
2. Postmodernism has a false epistemology -- or, more precisely, ideas about identity that are at best partially true and false. To presume you automatically understand the meaning of my words on face value, without plumbing any deeper, just because you know my gender and my country of origin and a little bit about its history gives you the same odds of being right as turning on the TV one night and immediately seeing a movie you desperately wanted to watch. By contrast, intellectual shamanism holds that only the individual alone can truly know herself, and that this kind of knowing is possible only at the point where they are extremely alienated from themselves as others view them. Then they see the limitations of their formally-recognized identity. Only via extreme alienation from oneself and others is the individual able to become free.
3. Postmodernism is an elitist academic discipline. Intellectual shamanism is embraced by outsiders to the system. If you were not an outsider when you set out on you intellectual voyage, you will be so by the end of it. "When I lay asleep, then did a sheep eat at the ivy-wreath on my head,—it ate, and said thereby: "Zarathustra is no longer a scholar."
It said this, and went away clumsily and proudly. A child told it to me.
I like to lie here where the children play, beside the ruined wall, among thistles and red poppies.
A scholar am I still to the children, and also to the thistles and red poppies. Innocent are they, even in their wickedness.
But to the sheep I am no longer a scholar: so willeth my lot-blessings upon it!
For this is the truth: I have departed from the house of the scholars, and the door have I also slammed behind me."--Nietzsche
4. Shamanism embraces emotional nihilism as a means to escaping the shackles of conformity. Postmodernism embraces a superficial notion of transgression, which is supposed to assist the hopeful individual to climb up the ladder of the academic hierarchy.
When criticism is constructive
Giving and taking criticism is much easier if the ego is not very involved. By “ego” I don’t mean self-esteem, but rather the sense of one’s individual, isolated identity as being individual and isolated.
Japanese people take criticism much more easily, because they see it as useful for their progress, but Western people seem to see it as an attack on their identity.
I’ve tried it both ways and nowadays I opt for the Japanese way as this is much kinder on myself and, furthermore, facilitates my progress.
The problem with viewing criticism from the point of view of the isolated and individual ego is that criticism gains the power of absolute values. This is because the ego is very much stuck in the present. I believe that Freud might have said, the role of the ego is to orient us to the present. But, that is also its limitation. The present and its limitations are absolute. Therefore, criticism seems to present itself to us as an absolute condemnation of our absolute identity in the absolute nature of the present.
What is lost in all of this is the sense of the self as a subject in transition. The process of transition is itself meaningful and valuable, whereas the criticism is only indicative of the kind of progress one is making.
When criticism is not constructive
Constructive criticism can recognize me as a person. It’s as simple and complicated as that. I’ve had all sorts of criticism that doesn’t do so, ranging from, “You should be able to pull a rabbit out of hat, no matter what your personal circumstances, because the situation demands it!” to “You’re not conforming to my understanding of a perfect gender stereotype and that is wrong. You have to do it.”
People need to have an implicit theory of general personhood if they are to criticise me constructively. That is the very least requirement.
Secondly, if they ignore facts about me — stuff I’ve actually told them — and yet then attempt to criticise me personally, their criticisms are disqualified.
Too much criticism makes idealistic and unrealistic demands. ”I want you to go back in time to make everything perfect, and then once it has become perfect, adopt a perfect attitude and tone about everything. You need to stop acting, thinking and behaving as if history had anything to do with you.”
Other forms of criticism that don’t take personhood into account are those that demand one should not be angry in response to extremely infuriating situations: “You can get ahead better if you are not angry.”
Yes — perhaps so. But it remains that I’m a person -- so, I am angry.
Tuesday 14 February 2012
Monday 13 February 2012
The left and right of US politics -- both metaphysical positions
The problem with contemporary politics is the either-or conceptualisation of things, which is based on a simple binary form of metaphysics that roughly divides the left from the right right.
The right screams about moral responsibility.
The left says, "There's no guilt. Just take a pill for what ails you."
Neither of these views necessarily make much sense.
To avoid metaphysics, it would be far better to frame problems in terms of quality of life, rather than morality and its flipside of a guilt-free existence.
For instance: would quality of life be enhanced in the long term by simply taking a pill?
If not what are the alternatives?
Sunday 12 February 2012
shamanism
I coined this term, "shamanistic doubling" to describe how certain types of 'madness' can be productive states. One looks at oneself from the outside and gains valuable knowledge and experience by reducing or increasing the level of one's emotional involvement. Traditional shamans take drugs in order to gain a sense of seeing everything from outside of the ego. In conceptual terms, we can understand shamanism as a temporary departure from the here and now in order to bring something back from an experience of an alternative state of consciousness. This could be a solution to a problem, a creative product or an intellectual idea. Notably, The double helix was discovered on LSD.
Alternative states of consciousness are often experienced spontaneously by those who exposed to war or extreme episodes of violence. My PhD thesis (2010) examines the experiences of Zimbabwean writer, DAMBUZDO MARECHERA, from this viewpoint.
torn apart left and right
What Rhodesian culture was is very, very, hard to understand. Even I had a hard time understanding it, because I grew up in it but didn't recognize what either the Rhodesians or the rest of the world were reacting to. The civil war has already started by the time I was born. Then it finished when I was 12 and I emigrated to Australia with my family when I was 16. Once, I emigrated, it was the start of another war, only on a psychological level. My parents wanted me to be staunchly right-wing, but Australia was a more liberal culture, especially the university system. My tendencies were left libertarian, although I didn't have a name for it at that time.
So, to be independent, I had to go against everything my parents had an emotional attachment to, in an ideological sense. It felt like a kind of acceptance of death -- either mine or my father's -- when I eventually realized how hostile my parents had become toward me, when I reached in my late twenties. I had been bullied at work, for being from where I was from. This labour union workplace considered itself a left-wing social organisation. Someone there didn't like me because of where I was from, and indeed I was rather socially inept in those days -- too much so to see it coming or to defend myself. I had suffered from war trauma, not really my own, perhaps, but that of my father. He had been traumatized by war all of his life -- first the second world war, which robbed him of his father just after he was born, and then the Rhodesian civil war, which robbed him of his younger brother and sent him on call-up duty, six months in, six months out.
After all this sacrifice and ideological indoctrination against the infiltrating "communists" (the guerilla groups were trained by USSR and China), my father hated anything remotely "left-wing". It's not that he took the time to understand it. He had to immediately assimilate to an entirely different culture starting from a very low status position. He had previously been a lecturer at the Polytech. So, he became even more traumatized.
It seems he attempted to solve the problems of his profound, underlying trauma from childhood and beyond and his ideological confusion by lashing out at me. His mother had always been insensitive to him, throwing him into the deep end of every new experience, and allowing others to treat him sadistically at times, without intervening. So, my father developed the view that I was in some sense his mother. He became the frightened infant lashing out at her for her insensitivity to his needs.
Needless to say, this was extremely frightening and confusing to me and made it much more difficult for me to re-orient myself in Australian culture. I'd come from a rural, tribal culture and very little about modernity made any sense to me. I found it extremely inimical.
My failure to adapt also very much angered my father. He saw his own failure (in his parents' eyes) in me and my behavior.
However, I couldn't adapt because I was becoming more and more traumatized. People were treating me like I was a racist and uppity, when I was just extremely shy and didn't actually know anything about people's subjective values or beliefs.
So the right-wingers were attacking me for adapting and the left wingers were attacking me for daring to migrate to Australia. And people were still very angry, even ten or fifteen years after the war. Family members had been killed in the war, and many Rhodesians wanted to kill anyone who expressed any left-wing tendencies. This was a primitive rage.To leave the conservative culture of Rhodesia is akin to trying to leave the Aum Supreme Truth Cult. Leftists in demand of their pound of flesh make this almost impossible to achieve. If anything, the loss of the war made my emotions of betrayal even stronger. How could you leave a situation when it was so frail and in need? The war and been tribal and personal as much as it had been ideological.
I developed chronic fatigue syndrome -- which took me many years to recover from. My body had totally overheated due to this stress.
Most of the onlookers must have believed that this form of suffering was necessary and good for me, for they took the side of anyone who judged anything against me.
Saturday 11 February 2012
USA and the three Rs.
A funny story shall now be told.
I joined a writer’s group so many years ago, when I was but a young smidgeon of my present self. I’d written and submitted, for collective critique, a story about travelling late on an African road with only one headlight (the other was broken and no replacement could be obtained from any supplier). So, we’re zooming along on a pot-holed road at about 140 km/hour, in the pitch dark, when suddenly there is this a figure who looks to be in a trance, walking directly towards us, in the middle of the road. The car swerves to miss him, and as I look back I see the guy hasn’t flinched, nor changed his general course of direction. He is still walking at a slow to even pace in the middle of the road.
“What was that?” asked my cousin, who was in the back seat, trying to get some sleep. “Was it an animal?”
“No,” her husband replied. “A munt.” A “munt” in the old, colonial lingo, is a slightly dismissive term for a black person.
As I recall, the guy’s eyes looked frozen. I wrote in my short narrative that his eyes looked like frozen egg whites.
I don’t recall whether or not my short story contained the term, “munt”, or indeed any kind of explanation of the term, but somebody did take the trouble to write back that it was absolutely pointless for me to use the term “eyes like frozen egg whites”, since nobody knew what it meant, and that I needed to use a more accessible term that ordinary people could understand.
Since then I've become gradually more and more acquainted with American “ordinariness” to the extent that I’ve pretty much concluded it has its equivalence in the term, “illiteracy”.
Friday 10 February 2012
The past
THIS WAS THE PAST
This was just the baseline of the underlying problem I had to face: the inability of my father, after migration (and perhaps before) to differentiate me from himself. There was another level to it, apart from the inability of my father to discern that I was a different person from him. He was also reversing the parent-child relationship, so that I was responsible for him, for his failures, his moody outbursts and so on. At times, he was a two year old yelling his hostilities at a figure he took to be his mother.
Then there were also the problems brought on by cultural shock, loss of identity and stress — all factors of migration. I was not behaving like a right-wing female, as my father had anticipated I ought to be doing. This seemed like a betrayal to him — although one expressed in angry, aggressive attitudes, rather than words.
Then there was the fact that the rest of my family were rather right wing — and religious to differing degrees. They bought into my father’s cover-up story that I was an unpleasant person who required heavy berating and control to set me on the right path.
So, there were many layers of difficulty for me, brought on by my father’s very strange early relationship with his mother.
And, people didn’t believe me that there was anything odd about my father. They inevitably bought his patriarchal line that fathers are good and caring -- and upheld a view that there was something wrong with me.
And when I was bullied at work, this appeared like confirmation to my father that there was something wrong with me that required ever more severe correction.
Draft chapter 5: my father's memoir
During World War Two, the public had contributed to a war fund for people who needed help. Known as the national war fund, they held a party every Christmas for children of service members. I remember standing at the back of a hall when some loudmouthed joker started to make a great deal of noise. Then he began to call out names. One by one, kids would go up to him and be given a box. After a while, a couple of women near me said that is you, Peter, go up. I had no idea what they were talking about so I stayed put. Besides, I was not in a hurry to be introduced to the loud gentleman who looked like he might be dangerous. He must have gone on calling out names because somebody else grabbed hold of me and pushed me up. My problem was I had no idea who Peter deSmidt was. Eventually, I got a box with a torch in it.
This sort of thing was continually happening. People kept calling out Peter deSmidt. The following year, the party was a fancy dress at the drill hall. The drill hall was used for all sorts of things. A few years before it had been used to put people in who had the 'flu, which afflicted half the world's population. For the fancy dress, my mother delivered me as a snow ball, wrapped in cotton wool in 35 degree heat. I could not find my way though it to my mouth, so I could not drink a cool drink. People tried to feed me cold jelly but could not find my mouth so it would roll down my stomach and turn the cotton wool and jelly into a big sticky mess. I learned many valuable lessons that day. Some people are gentle. Some are not. My mother had annoyed me by just dropping me there and taking a long time to pick me up.
In later years, the drill hall provided another experience. I was attending army cadets every Friday, for two until five. It was part of the school curriculum. They decided to have a selection process for NCOs. The put us though a brief training course in which we had to drill sections and platoons. I thought I had revised my commands but the one command that always stymied me was when you had the whole company on parade and you had to tell them to turn right. Shortly before this test, I had been in a practice for the Queen's Birthday parade and had heard a Sergeant Major say company will advance about turn and march off in column of route. So, I came to the point in drilling the company when they were inspecting my ability. I said, "company will advance about turn". Anyway, something was wrong because the Sergeant who was testing me stopped me and said there's no such command and since I couldn't think of what the correct command would be, I froze and the company marched right off the parade square, at which point the Sergeant screamed out, about turn, and they all came back. It came as no surprise to anyone that I wasn't promoted at the age of 18.
We were in an army call up for retraining some years later and my long overdue corporal stripes emerged. I was 20. When I collected my enrolment strip, it had Corporal Armstrong written on it. I hated the army, the regimentation. On this occasion, I decided I wouldn't tell anyone about it. I decided I would keep it to myself while everyone was being organised all around me. I did not tell anyone that I had been made a corporal and I did not collect my stripes. I joined the rest of the ranks. I avoided having to tell everyone what to do and because I did not want them to pick on me. Later, when the tone of the situation had got a bit too much, I went and got my stripes. The lance corporal who had been picking on me was put into his place. Ten years later, I was promoted to Sergeant.
On one occasion, I was a duty sergeant at army HQ and some people appeared at the door and asked me to sign them in. They weren't wearing uniform so I refused to sign them in. There was quite a lot of trouble over that. Trouble came in many guises. I was not the only member of my family in the forces. My brothers David and Philip were also in the royal Rhodesian regiment. One evening, my mother called me to say David had been shot. It turned out to be that two groups had been given the same grid reference. It used to happen quite a lot.
David made a reasonable recovery after being shot in the legs. He still has big holes in his legs. He met a nurse in hospital whom he subsequently married. Some six months later, I was about to leave for work when a phone call told me that Philip had been shot dead. This was 1976. I had call up papers in the post. As you can imagine, I was tense. By now, I was in my thirties. When. I went for my call up, Glendale was six months pregnant with Robert, the youngest of the four kids. When I arrived at the barracks headquarters, I thought I would speak to someone about it. It is not fair to say that Glenda wasn't handling it well – she was coping. The upshot of it was that the Sargent major transferred me to a communications centre, which took me out of the direct line of action. I was only five miles away from home and Glenda knew I was not in the line of fire of enemy troops.
My duties now consisted of reporting to the tele-printer centre, where for up to 12 hours a day, we would redirect messages. Glenda picked me up from the ComCen at the end of the day. One evening, I was standing on the edge of the veranda when it was raining heavily, the Askari standing next to me suddenly burst into life and held a rifle to his shoulder and pointed it to the gate, screaming stop or I fire. I glanced up and saw that the car was making no effort to stop. I alerted him that it was my wife and he put his rifle down.
ComCen was hard, working through the night. We would start at 7 in the morning, work though to one o'clock in the afternoon, go home and come in on seven the same day until seven the following morning. This cycle repeated, back in at seven, so we were always tired. It made me surly.
It was an act of great significance for the army to transfer me to an inactive position, as they had been short of people for active service.
This sort of thing was continually happening. People kept calling out Peter deSmidt. The following year, the party was a fancy dress at the drill hall. The drill hall was used for all sorts of things. A few years before it had been used to put people in who had the 'flu, which afflicted half the world's population. For the fancy dress, my mother delivered me as a snow ball, wrapped in cotton wool in 35 degree heat. I could not find my way though it to my mouth, so I could not drink a cool drink. People tried to feed me cold jelly but could not find my mouth so it would roll down my stomach and turn the cotton wool and jelly into a big sticky mess. I learned many valuable lessons that day. Some people are gentle. Some are not. My mother had annoyed me by just dropping me there and taking a long time to pick me up.
In later years, the drill hall provided another experience. I was attending army cadets every Friday, for two until five. It was part of the school curriculum. They decided to have a selection process for NCOs. The put us though a brief training course in which we had to drill sections and platoons. I thought I had revised my commands but the one command that always stymied me was when you had the whole company on parade and you had to tell them to turn right. Shortly before this test, I had been in a practice for the Queen's Birthday parade and had heard a Sergeant Major say company will advance about turn and march off in column of route. So, I came to the point in drilling the company when they were inspecting my ability. I said, "company will advance about turn". Anyway, something was wrong because the Sergeant who was testing me stopped me and said there's no such command and since I couldn't think of what the correct command would be, I froze and the company marched right off the parade square, at which point the Sergeant screamed out, about turn, and they all came back. It came as no surprise to anyone that I wasn't promoted at the age of 18.
We were in an army call up for retraining some years later and my long overdue corporal stripes emerged. I was 20. When I collected my enrolment strip, it had Corporal Armstrong written on it. I hated the army, the regimentation. On this occasion, I decided I wouldn't tell anyone about it. I decided I would keep it to myself while everyone was being organised all around me. I did not tell anyone that I had been made a corporal and I did not collect my stripes. I joined the rest of the ranks. I avoided having to tell everyone what to do and because I did not want them to pick on me. Later, when the tone of the situation had got a bit too much, I went and got my stripes. The lance corporal who had been picking on me was put into his place. Ten years later, I was promoted to Sergeant.
On one occasion, I was a duty sergeant at army HQ and some people appeared at the door and asked me to sign them in. They weren't wearing uniform so I refused to sign them in. There was quite a lot of trouble over that. Trouble came in many guises. I was not the only member of my family in the forces. My brothers David and Philip were also in the royal Rhodesian regiment. One evening, my mother called me to say David had been shot. It turned out to be that two groups had been given the same grid reference. It used to happen quite a lot.
David made a reasonable recovery after being shot in the legs. He still has big holes in his legs. He met a nurse in hospital whom he subsequently married. Some six months later, I was about to leave for work when a phone call told me that Philip had been shot dead. This was 1976. I had call up papers in the post. As you can imagine, I was tense. By now, I was in my thirties. When. I went for my call up, Glendale was six months pregnant with Robert, the youngest of the four kids. When I arrived at the barracks headquarters, I thought I would speak to someone about it. It is not fair to say that Glenda wasn't handling it well – she was coping. The upshot of it was that the Sargent major transferred me to a communications centre, which took me out of the direct line of action. I was only five miles away from home and Glenda knew I was not in the line of fire of enemy troops.
My duties now consisted of reporting to the tele-printer centre, where for up to 12 hours a day, we would redirect messages. Glenda picked me up from the ComCen at the end of the day. One evening, I was standing on the edge of the veranda when it was raining heavily, the Askari standing next to me suddenly burst into life and held a rifle to his shoulder and pointed it to the gate, screaming stop or I fire. I glanced up and saw that the car was making no effort to stop. I alerted him that it was my wife and he put his rifle down.
ComCen was hard, working through the night. We would start at 7 in the morning, work though to one o'clock in the afternoon, go home and come in on seven the same day until seven the following morning. This cycle repeated, back in at seven, so we were always tired. It made me surly.
It was an act of great significance for the army to transfer me to an inactive position, as they had been short of people for active service.
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