Repost: paths of discipline

That which is primeval in the character structure can be brought to a condition of being quite familiar to the higher mind. When this happens, the higher part no longer has to fear it as much. Don’t get me wrong – I am not talking about taming or the kind of familiarity that breeds contempt. Rather, consider a surfer who wants to ride a 30 ft wave. He or she will start with smaller waves, then moving to higher ones. The purpose is to learn to move with the wave, to harness its energy as one own, and not to go under.

I think Nietzsche and Bataille were both aware of the tiered layer of the psyche. They were not trying to promote animalism or degeneration of the higher mind. That is a caricature of their position, which in the case of Bataille I have seen at times given the term, “left fascism”. You see, people fear that the passions will start to predominate over reason and this will be an expression of fascism.

The opposite may be true, in that when we deny the power of the passions, we embrace a regimented order that in some ways approximates fascism.

It’s not that I think everybody has to become big wave surfers or riders of wild stallions. Some people do and others don’t. I had to do so, because I had so much buried violence in me. I had to bring into a greater awareness and interactive relationship that which was in danger of destroying me otherwise. I had to go forth and meet the danger.

Now, I realize other people do not need to do that to nearly the same extent. Some people don’t have this measure of violence already in them that they need to confront and learn to work with (but never exactly to “tame”). I had it in abundance, partly genetically, and partly because I had been touched by an actual war. So Nietzsche and Bataille were appropriate allies for me, helping me to come to terms with the deeper layers of my self. I am also aware that other people read them in totally different ways, not understanding that they provide an instruction manual for riding big waves. They don’t have the same internal needs as I, so they see a lot of the writing as gratuitous, whereas I see all of it as necessary and precise.

Putting it a different way, my path to emancipation necessarily had to be different from the path others will take. I have to keep approaching the wilderness within myself, or otherwise I lose emotional valency. My higher mind is exceedingly strong and rarely in danger of disintegrating, so I have never had cause to fear that it would not rebuild itself, should it have to do so.

All appearances aside, I am prone to being entirely dominated by the higher mind. Should I allow this to happen, I will become schizoid, regimented and retiring. It is, in fact, the higher mind that is a basic threat to my sanity, which requires modulating. By “higher mind”, don’t mean reason, exactly, but authoritarianism. My social conditioning, from a very early age, was quite authoritarianism, compared to what people experience today. I have this to thank for the fact that I have a very, very militarized external shell. (And, as I have said to you, my psyche is in a way, back-to-front compared to most people, since MY potential fascism stems from the control center of my higher mind. In fact, if someone aggravates me violently and for a long enough time, I am quite capable of becoming a killer. I have enough external self-control to do just about anything.)

Bataille and Nietzsche are softening effects for me. They don’t turn me into a fascist, but teach me how to take pleasure in myself in a way that prevents me from directing my negative energies outwardly onto others. I keep them inward and enjoy them for myself.

My path to peace is different from others’ though, and it leads to lots of misunderstandings, especially when people imagine that my higher mind is in danger from my lower mind, as if it really were not very much stronger than these lower forces, in almost every way.

Genetic nature and social conditioning obviously have a lot to do with these differences, as I have noted. Also there is the vexing issue of gender, since I seem to be aligned with the masculine side of things, in the traditional order, which ought not to be possible

I really don’t do anything “on purpose”, such as choose a gender identity or try to align myself with something wild so as to appear cool. I have to follow a particular structure of meaning that has nothing to do with personal choice, just something discovered.

In any case, what is real and what appears to be real in my case is generally, if not always, misaligned. I am, actually, being exceedingly moral when I try to engage with my primeval self rather than leave it to its own devices. When I assert that I do not “choose” my state of being, this is also far from being, as some might think, an admission of failure. I am very good at managing myself. Also, others should be grateful when I don’t see myself as being in any way similar to them – this means I leave them alone, which sometimes is the best they can hope for.