Why does one care what anybody thinks?
The bourgeois ideal is that we spring whole, from our father's heads, like Athena appeared out of the head of Zeus and "pealed to the broad sky her clarion cry of war." (Pindar, Seventh Olympian Ode).
This is perfectly ideal and I admire the aesthetic. It comes with the injunction, "Thou ought not to care what others think." Now that I am older, I understand the double-prohibition of the Western ideal. Its other side is: "You don't listen. You think too much of yourself. Pay attention to what others say."
Perhaps these two conflicting principles are supposed to guide you to a resolution via the golden mean. Nietzsche prefers the blunt term, "mediocrity". A moral resolution out of two opposing principles results in only this.
The contradiction in terms that is bourgeois culture has its answer in shamanism. One stops thinking. One genuinely doesn't care. That is, one embraces the benign aspects of Thanatos (the death instinct), thus allowing life to take care of itself. The shaman enshrouds herself in the cloak of death, thus turning all intentions into spirit. NOT DOING is the answer to aggression. One doesn't respond. One allows death to take its course. Motivations themselves also become much more apparent under the auspices of not doing. One sees the underlying links between different levels of reality. Actions seem to be modes of overstating one's position when so little is necessary -- to intervene very slightly and change everything.
Shamanic insight emerges from underneath the shroud of death and ego loss. Reality starts to make more sense when it is least interfered with.
One truly ceases to care -- and by not worrying, one sees what needs to be done and does it.
The bourgeois ideal is that we spring whole, from our father's heads, like Athena appeared out of the head of Zeus and "pealed to the broad sky her clarion cry of war." (Pindar, Seventh Olympian Ode).
This is perfectly ideal and I admire the aesthetic. It comes with the injunction, "Thou ought not to care what others think." Now that I am older, I understand the double-prohibition of the Western ideal. Its other side is: "You don't listen. You think too much of yourself. Pay attention to what others say."
Perhaps these two conflicting principles are supposed to guide you to a resolution via the golden mean. Nietzsche prefers the blunt term, "mediocrity". A moral resolution out of two opposing principles results in only this.
The contradiction in terms that is bourgeois culture has its answer in shamanism. One stops thinking. One genuinely doesn't care. That is, one embraces the benign aspects of Thanatos (the death instinct), thus allowing life to take care of itself. The shaman enshrouds herself in the cloak of death, thus turning all intentions into spirit. NOT DOING is the answer to aggression. One doesn't respond. One allows death to take its course. Motivations themselves also become much more apparent under the auspices of not doing. One sees the underlying links between different levels of reality. Actions seem to be modes of overstating one's position when so little is necessary -- to intervene very slightly and change everything.
Shamanic insight emerges from underneath the shroud of death and ego loss. Reality starts to make more sense when it is least interfered with.
One truly ceases to care -- and by not worrying, one sees what needs to be done and does it.
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