I have developed quite strong instinctive capabilities to anticipate danger. Now, I have always these capabilities, I think, not since birth but since early childhood. I have an ability to put up a shield against emotion, so that I don't experience it fully. That is the particular nature of my "pathology" (which perhaps is more of a Spockian adaptation, and in the right sorts of environment would be a boon and not a pathology at all).
My ability to put this shield in place means that I can experience very extreme events without fully experiencing them at the time. Indeed, if I am actually aware I am putting up the shield, I don't even have to experience the events retroactively. Failing that, it is a form of dissociation, and I do have to rewind and try to re-experience things *with emotion this time*.
But because I do have this uncanny ability to slip up a gear or two in the face of extreme or difficult situations, I do enjoy a bit of extremism as a delicacy. I like the occasional skydive or boxing match or engagement with somebody like you.
On the other hand, I am very mature about it. I have always has a strong aversion to blaming others when something goes wrong. I tend to blame myself, because that returns my power to me. It gives me more opportunities for leaning and greater leeway to fight back -- and of course, there is a core to this that is sacred/narcissistic (but not in a way that is malignant).
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When I wrote my thesis, part of the difficulty was dealing with the small band of pathology in Marechera, which suddenly took me by surprise. I'm over the temporary madness I contracted, though. The slip and dissolution into socially undifferentiated sights and sounds is a form of regressive madness, but it did cure me of any latent tendency to need or desire approval from others. Although regressive, it is a form of transcendence, because afterwards the narrow pathways that people forge do seem to be extremely narrow and quite obviously to often meet with dead ends, sort of like an ant hill still under construction. To demand that society should give one a "place" somewhere in the tunnels of the ant hill starts to seem absurd.
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Pineal insight: perhaps my experience was like that -- a certain deep immersion in life's richness, which somehow dissolves previous trains of thought and makes convention seem entirely external to what matters most in life.
But, then after that one necessarily has to rationally rebuild, in terms of considering what one will hold to be true and what one's relationship to convention ought to be. Perhaps one decides one doesn't need it so much and consequently one keeps one's distance from it. Or, one gets closer, but also with a sense of emotional distancing.
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Having spent 6 years with Marechera's madness, and gleaned what I could, from beneath the chaos of kachasu and other African debris, I think I have a different expectation of what "Western shamanism" can be than you do. It's not about the holy, wise man, offering support and giving out advice, but much closer to an opportunity to gain more experience with the different layers of the psyche, so as to orient oneself.
You kind of have to expose yourself to danger and do battle with malignant spirits to obtain this potion.
One may indeed, in learning more about these things, also learn that one has strong aversions to this or that. Isn't it a sign of a strong character to also have a strong "for" and "against"? It would be pathological if this were based on fear, or on a lack of experimentation. But if one's for an against are actually based on active experimentation, then one deserves to keep them and to reverence them, for they are ONESELF.
Perhaps this is, or ought to be, the true source of an organic moral dualism, so long as one does not universalize one's sense of reality, but maintains the perspective that these are one's personal values, based on one's own experiences and values. In this case, the moral dualism does not become malignant.
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I think moral dualism is malignant when it is infantile -- that is, for instance in Saudi Arabia, where women are told not to use air conditioners at home, because it is sign they are home during the day (the husbands presumably being at work). This is a projection of sexual evil onto women -- a darkening of them, both literally and figuratively. The Saudi men have sexual desires, obviously -- but they don't seem to, in the frame of moral dualism, because the origins of sexual evil can be traced to the sound of the air conditioners going during the day -- a beckoning call like no other.
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Finally...stable wisdom probably doesn't exist, because history is always changing us and we need to fit our wisdom to our historical contexts, at least in order to be able to navigate them. As I said, my particular adaptation is something akin to the adaption of the body when it experiences hypothermia. This tendency to redirect the emotions from the extremities to maintain core temperature is very strong within me. It's bad because I may inadvertently sacrifice a toe or even a limb. On the good side, there is a certain stability to my character. I actually become MORE stable in extreme situations as I move into my range of positive adaptation.
My ability to put this shield in place means that I can experience very extreme events without fully experiencing them at the time. Indeed, if I am actually aware I am putting up the shield, I don't even have to experience the events retroactively. Failing that, it is a form of dissociation, and I do have to rewind and try to re-experience things *with emotion this time*.
But because I do have this uncanny ability to slip up a gear or two in the face of extreme or difficult situations, I do enjoy a bit of extremism as a delicacy. I like the occasional skydive or boxing match or engagement with somebody like you.
On the other hand, I am very mature about it. I have always has a strong aversion to blaming others when something goes wrong. I tend to blame myself, because that returns my power to me. It gives me more opportunities for leaning and greater leeway to fight back -- and of course, there is a core to this that is sacred/narcissistic (but not in a way that is malignant).
-----
When I wrote my thesis, part of the difficulty was dealing with the small band of pathology in Marechera, which suddenly took me by surprise. I'm over the temporary madness I contracted, though. The slip and dissolution into socially undifferentiated sights and sounds is a form of regressive madness, but it did cure me of any latent tendency to need or desire approval from others. Although regressive, it is a form of transcendence, because afterwards the narrow pathways that people forge do seem to be extremely narrow and quite obviously to often meet with dead ends, sort of like an ant hill still under construction. To demand that society should give one a "place" somewhere in the tunnels of the ant hill starts to seem absurd.
----
Pineal insight: perhaps my experience was like that -- a certain deep immersion in life's richness, which somehow dissolves previous trains of thought and makes convention seem entirely external to what matters most in life.
But, then after that one necessarily has to rationally rebuild, in terms of considering what one will hold to be true and what one's relationship to convention ought to be. Perhaps one decides one doesn't need it so much and consequently one keeps one's distance from it. Or, one gets closer, but also with a sense of emotional distancing.
-----
Having spent 6 years with Marechera's madness, and gleaned what I could, from beneath the chaos of kachasu and other African debris, I think I have a different expectation of what "Western shamanism" can be than you do. It's not about the holy, wise man, offering support and giving out advice, but much closer to an opportunity to gain more experience with the different layers of the psyche, so as to orient oneself.
You kind of have to expose yourself to danger and do battle with malignant spirits to obtain this potion.
One may indeed, in learning more about these things, also learn that one has strong aversions to this or that. Isn't it a sign of a strong character to also have a strong "for" and "against"? It would be pathological if this were based on fear, or on a lack of experimentation. But if one's for an against are actually based on active experimentation, then one deserves to keep them and to reverence them, for they are ONESELF.
Perhaps this is, or ought to be, the true source of an organic moral dualism, so long as one does not universalize one's sense of reality, but maintains the perspective that these are one's personal values, based on one's own experiences and values. In this case, the moral dualism does not become malignant.
----
I think moral dualism is malignant when it is infantile -- that is, for instance in Saudi Arabia, where women are told not to use air conditioners at home, because it is sign they are home during the day (the husbands presumably being at work). This is a projection of sexual evil onto women -- a darkening of them, both literally and figuratively. The Saudi men have sexual desires, obviously -- but they don't seem to, in the frame of moral dualism, because the origins of sexual evil can be traced to the sound of the air conditioners going during the day -- a beckoning call like no other.
----
Finally...stable wisdom probably doesn't exist, because history is always changing us and we need to fit our wisdom to our historical contexts, at least in order to be able to navigate them. As I said, my particular adaptation is something akin to the adaption of the body when it experiences hypothermia. This tendency to redirect the emotions from the extremities to maintain core temperature is very strong within me. It's bad because I may inadvertently sacrifice a toe or even a limb. On the good side, there is a certain stability to my character. I actually become MORE stable in extreme situations as I move into my range of positive adaptation.
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