What Did I Give Up? | Clarissa's Blog
For responsible others to view everything I say cynically is part of the way I am supposed to get morally reformed.
I won’t sacrifice anything anymore, because all my adult life, people have been trying to morally reform me, and I have learned from this that no sacrifice on my part will ever be enough to appease them. I know that seems weird — but the attitudes toward me have also been extremely weird. The general tendency is for people to take things I say out of context and to distort them. It would be like random people saying, “How dare she fornicate with our Montreal skyline! What impertinence! She needs to be reformed.”
What I am trying to say, in a round about way, is that if you put every kind of experience within the context of good and evil, there are no longer any meaningful sacrifices, no emotions and no imagination. What is left is the idea that somebody is fundamentally evil, and that by encouraging them to continue to sacrifice more and more, you are doing you best to teach them to turn away from their evil.
What I’m also trying to say is that when I left my home in Africa, and everything that ever had meaning to me up until that point, this was sacrifice enough. But people want to keep purging the “evil” out of me, as if no sacrifice would suffice.
People have quite an imagination about their role in rectifying history and taking control of the moral management of “the colonial”.
2.
Much of my adult life has been spent trying to understand whether people have a valid reason to morally reform me, along with trying to understand which of their moral reforms are viable, as well as trying to formulate strategies to avoid some of the most destructive of their moral reforms for me, has finally made me give up on the project.
People can’t seem to respond to things in an unbiased, unpolitical way, without bringing on the bully-boy or bully-girl tactics. They often require me to give an account of myself, in terms of how I dared to do or write or think something I did.
I’m just starting to tame this wild beast of animosity, understanding that a lot of its energy comes from projection, which in turn came from deep unhappiness in the criticizer’s inner soul. But, it has been hard to understand how so many people have become corrupted in this way …. which often leads to the confused state of mind: “What if it’s not them, but me?”
I find nothing of this moral retribution in my relationship with people from Asian cultures. Also, the moral tone tends to be inconsistent and hardly as virulent when relating to anybody from Zimbabwe. But Westerners? They sure have a rocket up their collective asses.
For responsible others to view everything I say cynically is part of the way I am supposed to get morally reformed.
I won’t sacrifice anything anymore, because all my adult life, people have been trying to morally reform me, and I have learned from this that no sacrifice on my part will ever be enough to appease them. I know that seems weird — but the attitudes toward me have also been extremely weird. The general tendency is for people to take things I say out of context and to distort them. It would be like random people saying, “How dare she fornicate with our Montreal skyline! What impertinence! She needs to be reformed.”
What I am trying to say, in a round about way, is that if you put every kind of experience within the context of good and evil, there are no longer any meaningful sacrifices, no emotions and no imagination. What is left is the idea that somebody is fundamentally evil, and that by encouraging them to continue to sacrifice more and more, you are doing you best to teach them to turn away from their evil.
What I’m also trying to say is that when I left my home in Africa, and everything that ever had meaning to me up until that point, this was sacrifice enough. But people want to keep purging the “evil” out of me, as if no sacrifice would suffice.
People have quite an imagination about their role in rectifying history and taking control of the moral management of “the colonial”.
2.
Much of my adult life has been spent trying to understand whether people have a valid reason to morally reform me, along with trying to understand which of their moral reforms are viable, as well as trying to formulate strategies to avoid some of the most destructive of their moral reforms for me, has finally made me give up on the project.
People can’t seem to respond to things in an unbiased, unpolitical way, without bringing on the bully-boy or bully-girl tactics. They often require me to give an account of myself, in terms of how I dared to do or write or think something I did.
I’m just starting to tame this wild beast of animosity, understanding that a lot of its energy comes from projection, which in turn came from deep unhappiness in the criticizer’s inner soul. But, it has been hard to understand how so many people have become corrupted in this way …. which often leads to the confused state of mind: “What if it’s not them, but me?”
I find nothing of this moral retribution in my relationship with people from Asian cultures. Also, the moral tone tends to be inconsistent and hardly as virulent when relating to anybody from Zimbabwe. But Westerners? They sure have a rocket up their collective asses.
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