Maleficent reality

It's good that some maturity still exists.  Here is a short story.  When I came to Australia, I didn't like anything I experienced.  It seemed like a really intense, pulsating reality had been reduced to something watered down; tepid.    Later I realized there was some raging intensity beneath the surface and that everybody had been repressing their real emotions.  That was in the abusive workplace situation.  And Lo!  I discovered, too, that I had been repressing mine, ever since migrating at the age of 15.  It had become my way to cope.   Anyway, armed with that insight and with health that had been substantially undermined through ongoing tolerance of the intolerable, I moved on.  

But I took with me some very painful knowledge that my relative happiness along with other people's ideological construct of my identity had lent much steam to me being targeted.   It seemed to me I had been an object of envy, even though there was no basis for this, in the sense that my previous life in Zimbabwe could not have been anything these Westerners could relate to, as it certainly did not involve having material goods or particularly high status or anything like that.

It perturbed me because I had to make a living and was worried about running into the same situation again.  I did not understand, at that time, enough about the complex psychodynamics both in myself and in other people.   Some of it seemed to have to do with cultural and political perceptions, which then had gained an emotional load of personal aggrievement.   I mean this on both sides --- I also felt aggrieved after the ring leader  of the harrassment proclaimed, "Great!  Now we can get an Australian to do the job."  On the first day I had started the job she has been speaking very loudly on the phone to someone about how she disapproved of the organisation employing someone from Zimbabwe.

The legacy of this situation was to deeply disturb me, as I did not know how the problem might be prevented from arising in future situations.  I still did not have enough self-knowledge or knowledge of others to have any confidence in not walking into another minefield.

I did not know what people wanted from me, but I understood the structure of their psyches was different from mine.  So, I tried the solution of adaptation -- becoming the same, as much as possible.

However, I could never really be the same, as I was skeptical.   I also saw too much that seemed nice on the surface of it, but was actually manipulative underneath.   For instance, instead of suggesting that I need to gain a particular skill that was lacking, behavior modification psychology was tried on me, perhaps so as to avoid direct confrontation or perhaps as cultural way of making me feel free to do anything I chose, in a situation not governed by choice.

I began to understand Western culture as being concerned with ego --- ego gratification (the maintenance of an illusion of freedom) and ego sensitivity:  (One must not speak directly to me, for fear of upsetting one's ego.)

I continued to try to assimilate myself to this logic, but it proved impossible in every instance.  The problem was I could see through the illusion of freedom in every instance, right down to the base of necessity -- that certain things just have to occur to keep the system running, but nobody wants to state what these are.  The lack of clarity was particularly vexing, because I didn't know whether people were really giving me a choice about something or whether it was a necessary part of the job I had to do.  Also, I felt like I was still on trial as a migrant, since I had not passed the first test, in the first workplace, of assimilating enough not to be targeted.

So, I continued to try learning the new "Western" culture, which was based on gratifying one's egoistic desires for an illusion of total freedom, whilst not offending other egos, whose true emotions were deeply repressed.

I gained the impression over time that what was required of me -- although I had no name for it at the time -- was narcissistic codependency.   I was to gratify the egos of anyone who asked me to provide for them.   That seemed to be an accurate interpretation of the codified message that came across to me as a demand for the illusion of absolute freedom.  I had to furnish this illusion for others.   Only, I was disinclined and really didn't have the energy to do it.

More recently, it has dawned on me that what I have taken for Western culture per se has really been people's reaction to me as a reflection of their identity in a negative sense.   Perhaps it is the narcissism of small differences (a term coined by Freud).   Certainly people have put their worst -- narcissistic -- foot forward in relation to me.   The idea of the "white colonial" seems to produce a very powerful and maleficent aura. Nobody wants to be identified as one, especially in a country whose colonial experience has been so recent.  At the same time, I think there is a certain envy and desire to have what one imagines that status involves.

Anyway, nobody wants to acknowledge these truths, and even suggesting that they are true has been enough to provoke attacks from unlikely quarters.

So.  My work involves Asians instead.