Friday 28 February 2014
Thursday 27 February 2014
Wednesday 26 February 2014
Spanning the bridge between God/Spirit and biologism
You can't be dominated by biologically oriented thinking, or instincts or drives, and expect to enter a new world you'd never entertained before. Those whose thinking accords with "intellectual shamanism" have had lives which span two historical eras (or, "history at cross-roads"). Nietzsche is a very good example of this, spanning an era dominated by "God" and one dominated by Darwinian ideas. Bataille's France embraced high levels of religiosity and artifice. And Marechera came from a colonial country. Enough said.
Then again if you're just an animal, self-admittedly so, how to you gain an understanding of the heights -- that is, of "God" and his mantel, which is cultural artifice?
Humanities and Social Classes | Clarissa's Blog
Humanities and Social Classes | Clarissa's Blog
Unfortunately the trained monkeys that are your everyday human being have learned to mouth the idea that they do not need to know more than they do because knowledge is pretension and elitist, so in many ways they were getting back an echo of their own hopes and aspirations of not having to go through a grueling education process that would put their naive assumptions under scrutiny. In general, politicians are opportunists who give you what you think you want -- often by taking away what you really need.
Unfortunately the trained monkeys that are your everyday human being have learned to mouth the idea that they do not need to know more than they do because knowledge is pretension and elitist, so in many ways they were getting back an echo of their own hopes and aspirations of not having to go through a grueling education process that would put their naive assumptions under scrutiny. In general, politicians are opportunists who give you what you think you want -- often by taking away what you really need.
The shamanic anti-fascist means to primeval wholeness
The shamanic anti-fascist means to primeval wholeness from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.
Seriously, you do not need to be any longer broken up, divided, postmodern, or separated from your emotions and instincts. Shamanic wholeness is a possibility.
Tuesday 25 February 2014
Contentious Disciplines | Clarissa's Blog
Contentious Disciplines | Clarissa's Blog
I read those American books not for their analyses, but in a meta- sense, to gain a better understanding of the writer's cultural context and the mode of thinking. It may seem as if I'm reading them for their content, but that is almost never so, although occasionally they have a bit of content. But I do differentiate strongly between books that have real food in them and those that don't. Marechera's writing, for instance, has real food, although those who despised him stated otherwise. They say he was just eclectic, but they do not see that he was taking fabrics and designs that originated in other cultures and wrapping them round his form so that they created a snug fit with his own extremely complex situation and emotional states. He wasn't just randomly appropriating. He was doing jazz, and redesigning. Because I can understand that, I can feel enriched. But others see only the external form. They can't enter the writing holistically.
I think Americans enter gender-based writing more easily, as it strikes notes that are familiar to them. They feel the writer must be their friend or at least on their side. But if you don't take the basic gender symbolism for granted, the writing seems flat and alienating.
In any case, as you can see, this all has to do with deep subjectivity, which is culturally engendered moreover. Now the Yankees will say they have no subjectively driven .. anything. They are purely objective (they say), reading things just as "they are". But I say this is a closed perspective that denies them a lot of knowledge and self-awareness. They need to get deeper than this boring gender thing they're stuck on.
I read those American books not for their analyses, but in a meta- sense, to gain a better understanding of the writer's cultural context and the mode of thinking. It may seem as if I'm reading them for their content, but that is almost never so, although occasionally they have a bit of content. But I do differentiate strongly between books that have real food in them and those that don't. Marechera's writing, for instance, has real food, although those who despised him stated otherwise. They say he was just eclectic, but they do not see that he was taking fabrics and designs that originated in other cultures and wrapping them round his form so that they created a snug fit with his own extremely complex situation and emotional states. He wasn't just randomly appropriating. He was doing jazz, and redesigning. Because I can understand that, I can feel enriched. But others see only the external form. They can't enter the writing holistically.
I think Americans enter gender-based writing more easily, as it strikes notes that are familiar to them. They feel the writer must be their friend or at least on their side. But if you don't take the basic gender symbolism for granted, the writing seems flat and alienating.
In any case, as you can see, this all has to do with deep subjectivity, which is culturally engendered moreover. Now the Yankees will say they have no subjectively driven .. anything. They are purely objective (they say), reading things just as "they are". But I say this is a closed perspective that denies them a lot of knowledge and self-awareness. They need to get deeper than this boring gender thing they're stuck on.
Contentious Disciplines | Clarissa's Blog
Contentious Disciplines | Clarissa's Blog
Do you ever read books in such a way that you get a lingering aftertaste from them? Some books seem very rich and others that had seemed full of content when you read them end up leaving you with a sensation of emptiness? I’ve always evaluated books this way, by whether they leave me feeling enriched or mentally flattened and American “intellectual” books leave me with a sense of nothing.
Do you ever read books in such a way that you get a lingering aftertaste from them? Some books seem very rich and others that had seemed full of content when you read them end up leaving you with a sensation of emptiness? I’ve always evaluated books this way, by whether they leave me feeling enriched or mentally flattened and American “intellectual” books leave me with a sense of nothing.
Contentious Disciplines | Clarissa's Blog
Contentious Disciplines | Clarissa's Blog
I'm currently rereading a book that came out a long time ago, in 2001, called THE LIAR'S TALE. It was very big in the USA, I believe, perhaps one of those listed on the New York Times best seller of books (do I have that reference right?)
Anyway, the author just really, really hates postmodernism. It's not like he hates it with nuance, but in a basic, crude fashion. He maintains it is fanciful and immoral. But then he begs the question as to what is not fanciful and what is moral. It's really not so self-evident as his own rhetoric would imply, especially by virtue of his very strong stance against this movement. Although he makes one or two historically-based arguments about what he thinks is going on when movements develop, he falls back on a rhetorical appeal to gender differences. At least that his how I read him. He literally says that Descartes thought that to embrace the truth was "manly and strong". So by implicit contrast, postmodernism would be feminine and frail, not unlike Eve in The Garden being deceived by a duplicitous snake. This kind of appeal to "common sense" is regularly achieved in books written around that time. Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate makes the same implicit argument: science is masculine and ought to be respected, but social engineering is a project of the left and is silly because, biologically, we're just not "like that".
USA intellectuals, it seems, really need to learn to make an argument that does not implicitly and surreptitiously appeal to how American Christians have learned to evaluate gender. What these writers do is very predictable and intellectually fraudulent.
I'm currently rereading a book that came out a long time ago, in 2001, called THE LIAR'S TALE. It was very big in the USA, I believe, perhaps one of those listed on the New York Times best seller of books (do I have that reference right?)
Anyway, the author just really, really hates postmodernism. It's not like he hates it with nuance, but in a basic, crude fashion. He maintains it is fanciful and immoral. But then he begs the question as to what is not fanciful and what is moral. It's really not so self-evident as his own rhetoric would imply, especially by virtue of his very strong stance against this movement. Although he makes one or two historically-based arguments about what he thinks is going on when movements develop, he falls back on a rhetorical appeal to gender differences. At least that his how I read him. He literally says that Descartes thought that to embrace the truth was "manly and strong". So by implicit contrast, postmodernism would be feminine and frail, not unlike Eve in The Garden being deceived by a duplicitous snake. This kind of appeal to "common sense" is regularly achieved in books written around that time. Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate makes the same implicit argument: science is masculine and ought to be respected, but social engineering is a project of the left and is silly because, biologically, we're just not "like that".
USA intellectuals, it seems, really need to learn to make an argument that does not implicitly and surreptitiously appeal to how American Christians have learned to evaluate gender. What these writers do is very predictable and intellectually fraudulent.
Monday 24 February 2014
postures and proclamations
Clarissa's Blog | An academic's opinions on feminism, politics, literature, philosophy, teaching, academia, and a lot more.
I really, really did think people were more rational than they turned out to be, because they kept telling me I was "colonial" and I was in the wrong. So I thought they must be godlike and perfectly rational. They were taking on that demeanor in their constant reprimands.
It turned out they were self-deluding cretins and I had been overly earnest and credulous regarding their postures and self-proclamations.
I really, really did think people were more rational than they turned out to be, because they kept telling me I was "colonial" and I was in the wrong. So I thought they must be godlike and perfectly rational. They were taking on that demeanor in their constant reprimands.
It turned out they were self-deluding cretins and I had been overly earnest and credulous regarding their postures and self-proclamations.
Clarissa's Blog | An academic's opinions on feminism, politics, literature, philosophy, teaching, academia, and a lot more.
Clarissa's Blog | An academic's opinions on feminism, politics, literature, philosophy, teaching, academia, and a lot more.
Well I did not have a sense of the cultural landscape in the past, or rather, my understanding of it was entirely different from what it is now. So I thought people were making rational demands of me. Now I see they were just gaining a certain amount of sadistic pleasure in pointing out ways they thought I fell short of their own values and ideals. I was only vulnerable to their emotional blackmail because I was a confused migrant. Also there was an element of truth -- I could not feel my own emotions very well. I tried very hard to be more emotionally aware, and I have achieved this, but I still do not effuse emotionality in the manner of a typical Western woman, nor would I wish to do so.
Well I did not have a sense of the cultural landscape in the past, or rather, my understanding of it was entirely different from what it is now. So I thought people were making rational demands of me. Now I see they were just gaining a certain amount of sadistic pleasure in pointing out ways they thought I fell short of their own values and ideals. I was only vulnerable to their emotional blackmail because I was a confused migrant. Also there was an element of truth -- I could not feel my own emotions very well. I tried very hard to be more emotionally aware, and I have achieved this, but I still do not effuse emotionality in the manner of a typical Western woman, nor would I wish to do so.
Boys Don’t Cry | Clarissa's Blog
Boys Don’t Cry | Clarissa's Blog
I've given up on trying to conform to gender roles -- and I did try hard for a couple of decades to "fit in". But now I realize that I've probably passed the cross-off age where
1. Others are going to target me viciously for not obeying gender norms
2. Where there is still enough flexibility in my personality (or capability lof imagining extreme change) that would enable any kind of extreme change.
Also, I've noticed that whenever I've trying to make the rational adjustment to what has been required of me, the best I have got is people labeling me "emotional" -- which makes me incomprehensible to myself, since the adjustments I had tried to make were based on my perceptions of social necessity, not inward desire.
I've given up on trying to conform to gender roles -- and I did try hard for a couple of decades to "fit in". But now I realize that I've probably passed the cross-off age where
1. Others are going to target me viciously for not obeying gender norms
2. Where there is still enough flexibility in my personality (or capability lof imagining extreme change) that would enable any kind of extreme change.
Also, I've noticed that whenever I've trying to make the rational adjustment to what has been required of me, the best I have got is people labeling me "emotional" -- which makes me incomprehensible to myself, since the adjustments I had tried to make were based on my perceptions of social necessity, not inward desire.
Sunday 23 February 2014
The “It’s Just Like” Mentality | Clarissa's Blog
The “It’s Just Like” Mentality | Clarissa's Blog
People feel extremely vulnerable when encountering something they have never experienced before, so there is always a rush to reduce it to something already known. That is also, by the way, why reading what I term, 'shamanic texts" is such a psychological challenge, even for me.
People feel extremely vulnerable when encountering something they have never experienced before, so there is always a rush to reduce it to something already known. That is also, by the way, why reading what I term, 'shamanic texts" is such a psychological challenge, even for me.
Saturday 22 February 2014
small potatoes
How to Swindle a Westerner: A Short Guidebook | Clarissa's Blog
I had a guy who used to pull this sort of thing on my all the time (the small potatoes stuff), but his needs were somewhat genuine, and this was at a time when John Howard was in power, trying to convince us all to adopt a lower-middle class mentality of mean-spirited concern for every cent we could grab, so given the choice, I preferred to cast my lot with the lumpen proles than with these lower-middle class mean-spirited vegetables. At least the former were happy, free-spirited and highly entertaining. That is better than being grey and hostile to anyone who seems not to be as puritanical as thou.
I had a guy who used to pull this sort of thing on my all the time (the small potatoes stuff), but his needs were somewhat genuine, and this was at a time when John Howard was in power, trying to convince us all to adopt a lower-middle class mentality of mean-spirited concern for every cent we could grab, so given the choice, I preferred to cast my lot with the lumpen proles than with these lower-middle class mean-spirited vegetables. At least the former were happy, free-spirited and highly entertaining. That is better than being grey and hostile to anyone who seems not to be as puritanical as thou.
Friday 21 February 2014
Do you have a thought in that there head?
Are you a social Darwinist OR intellectual/shaman? from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.
Are you taking the ideologically biologist path or the intellectual/shamanic path? You do have a choice, if you understand the nature of the problem early enough. Don't be a stooge and reduce yourself to your lowest possibility of being. I explain how one path leads to animalism and the other, via initiation, to full humanity.
Thursday 20 February 2014
How to Be a Cultured Person | Clarissa's Blog
How to Be a Cultured Person | Clarissa's Blog
"There is nobody I detest more than people who bark at their family members to let off steam. It is absolutely disgusting and incredibly vulgar to make one’s “moods” somebody else’s problem."
People like this, more often male, but sometimes also female, like to try to escape from themselves and the negative sensations they have into the "twosome" of themselves and another. So I've learned over the years -- over some very long years -- to block them. Indeed, you need to wrap them up in themselves. You don't let them cross that bridge to get away from what they find repulsive in themselves, or otherwise their repulsive thing becomes yours. So you give it back to them and wrap them up in themselves, by making them account for their repulsive thing. "What was the underlying meaning when you said that to me? What was the purpose? Why did you choose those words?"
Also, they are looking for an emotional reaction of any sort. A negative one is as good as a positive one, so you do not give them one. Consequently, they don't know how their words have been received and this makes them paranoid. Then you keep asking them what their underlying intent was.
I don't allow emotional transactions that I do not first approve, but many people think they can get away with these. It's an extremely dangerous game they choose to play.
"There is nobody I detest more than people who bark at their family members to let off steam. It is absolutely disgusting and incredibly vulgar to make one’s “moods” somebody else’s problem."
People like this, more often male, but sometimes also female, like to try to escape from themselves and the negative sensations they have into the "twosome" of themselves and another. So I've learned over the years -- over some very long years -- to block them. Indeed, you need to wrap them up in themselves. You don't let them cross that bridge to get away from what they find repulsive in themselves, or otherwise their repulsive thing becomes yours. So you give it back to them and wrap them up in themselves, by making them account for their repulsive thing. "What was the underlying meaning when you said that to me? What was the purpose? Why did you choose those words?"
Also, they are looking for an emotional reaction of any sort. A negative one is as good as a positive one, so you do not give them one. Consequently, they don't know how their words have been received and this makes them paranoid. Then you keep asking them what their underlying intent was.
I don't allow emotional transactions that I do not first approve, but many people think they can get away with these. It's an extremely dangerous game they choose to play.
Wednesday 19 February 2014
Tuesday 18 February 2014
My wilderness
What it means to grow up in "the wilderness" from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.
My sense of the wild in my history and character structure and what I believe must be preserved.
Monday 17 February 2014
Sunday 16 February 2014
Meditation on evil
The intrinsic human entwinement with evil from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.
Evil strengthens the character
Saturday 15 February 2014
Victimhood = Aseptic Emotions | Clarissa's Blog
Victimhood = Aseptic Emotions | Clarissa's Blog
Regarding victimhood, I think a great deal of the mindset that used to be more traditional and normative absolutely cannot be understood now because of the changing meaning of victimhood. I'm so, so old school in this. To me it was the most shocking revelation I have ever had that some people simply cannot avoid being victims. But that is what I learned from studying Marechera. The colonial regime said, "Of course they always can. It is their own fault!" I could go more deeply into the psychology in relation to myself, but that has been done to death, without success, and there isn't any point. Although the first time I noticed there was something extremely odd afoot was when they broke me down to tears at work, and I was so ashamed. But it was proclaimed that my shame was just a form of manipulation. So first you turn someone into a victim, which they do not want to be at all, and secondly you claim that they are only reacting as one because they are manipulative. I find that really sick. I'm not even sure it is a cultural misunderstanding, rather than a justification for more bullying.
Regarding victimhood, I think a great deal of the mindset that used to be more traditional and normative absolutely cannot be understood now because of the changing meaning of victimhood. I'm so, so old school in this. To me it was the most shocking revelation I have ever had that some people simply cannot avoid being victims. But that is what I learned from studying Marechera. The colonial regime said, "Of course they always can. It is their own fault!" I could go more deeply into the psychology in relation to myself, but that has been done to death, without success, and there isn't any point. Although the first time I noticed there was something extremely odd afoot was when they broke me down to tears at work, and I was so ashamed. But it was proclaimed that my shame was just a form of manipulation. So first you turn someone into a victim, which they do not want to be at all, and secondly you claim that they are only reacting as one because they are manipulative. I find that really sick. I'm not even sure it is a cultural misunderstanding, rather than a justification for more bullying.
Friday 14 February 2014
"Common sense" Vs. the shamanic tragic modality
There is a way in which I write and think, which is often taken for almost its precise opposite. This is due to philosophical unsophistication, but also to the attribution of emotionality to women. I'd like it if we could rise above superficial tendencies, to view historical and personal circumstances in more complex terms. The tragic modality, related to Nietzsche's ideas, involves a double-take in perception of the past. One assumes a capacity for action on the part of all humans, including the protagonist. Then also, one also recognises that fate can overcome the one who would choose his/her own destiny. By putting together these two dynamic aspects of existence, one ascertains the presence of tragedy. But if one responds to a text or a philosophy in a basically passive mode, one will not sense tragedy, but rather pathos. Women's texts are thus read as lacking a tragic component when the critic implicitly assumes that no dynamic action would have been possible either on their parts or on their behalves. The critic thus betrays his or her fundamentally flawed thinking.
Progressive Racism and Progressing Stupidity | Clarissa's Blog
Progressive Racism and Progressing Stupidity | Clarissa's Blog
Australian academics are definitely schooled to be more careful with language, but we also suffer, as I posted above, from extreme political correctness, which does not seem so extreme until you are fully out of the system and realize how much you had been muffled.
I imagine that the whininess of US culture is directly related to its passivity. One complains not because one has something that needs to be fixed, but because one does not expect it to be fixed. It’s a way of relaxing into one’s state of being more fully.
As for me, me ethos is different. If I say something is a problem, it really is one. If something isn’t addressed as a problem, I start to apply the same standards to others as they do to me. They think bullying is not an issue? Let me address them exactly how I have been addressed, and see how they like it. (I actually did this as an experiment for a while, because I really didn’t know whether people could put up with some really harsh treatment and shrug it off. My findings were that they couldn’t.)
Australian academics are definitely schooled to be more careful with language, but we also suffer, as I posted above, from extreme political correctness, which does not seem so extreme until you are fully out of the system and realize how much you had been muffled.
I imagine that the whininess of US culture is directly related to its passivity. One complains not because one has something that needs to be fixed, but because one does not expect it to be fixed. It’s a way of relaxing into one’s state of being more fully.
As for me, me ethos is different. If I say something is a problem, it really is one. If something isn’t addressed as a problem, I start to apply the same standards to others as they do to me. They think bullying is not an issue? Let me address them exactly how I have been addressed, and see how they like it. (I actually did this as an experiment for a while, because I really didn’t know whether people could put up with some really harsh treatment and shrug it off. My findings were that they couldn’t.)
Thursday 13 February 2014
Progressive Racism and Progressing Stupidity | Clarissa's Blog
Progressive Racism and Progressing Stupidity | Clarissa's Blog
Well if your heart isn’t in what you are doing and you have to do that job day in and day out, that is degrading to the mind and body. Certainly it is not “slavery” in the sense of being owned by a particular person and being required not to leave the premises. But it can be very degrading.
I do think people need to start using words with greater care, so that they do not make their own emotional concerns seem to be at the centre of the universe, though. Supposing I communicate to others, as the author may be trying to do, my sense of degradation at work, but I can’t take into account greater extremes of oppression, or variations of it, because I have already used the available words with too great a rhetorical effect in service of myself — well then I have exhausted communication even before I have begun engaging with others.
That is perhaps the problem with most forms of political correctness today. They immediately exhaust the possibilities of communication though the extreme use of language as a rhetorical device. One either agrees with the speaker or walks away shaking one’s head.
But outside the world of narrow, perspectival manipulation, reality opens up. At least, it has the potential to do so. Really, I think the problem with much of contemporary academia, in the humanities, is that it is stuck in this mode of limited, perspectival management. And this tendency toward socially engineering what kinds of meanings are permitted to be expressed is deeply entrenched in much of general society as a whole. That is why I have not been able to express very simple and even banal things about my past, but had to write a book to get thse things out of my system. People would stop me and imply I’m not permitted to speak of them. And then they would go to work on me, trying to manipulate my perspective so that I would take in reality in a much more narrow and socially contrived filter.
And in fact, that was quite traumatising, not because of the views I was expected to embrace as such, but because I was not permitted even to say the very plain and trivial things I wanted to relate about my past experiences in Africa. If you can’t relate even matter of fact things, you cannot make a cultural transition from one state of mind to another.
So, in fact that was why I chose not to pursue an academic career, because I can’t walk around in that kind of a straitjacket. It’s not only uncomfortable, but is is unhealthy. One would have first be mad enough to accept it. Some people are, and they comply to a limited degree.
But most people in the humanities are taught to use language to keep out what they sense to be “evil”. Under the label of “evil”, put the unknown, the wild that is just beyond the borders of suburban consciousness, the capacity for free thinking, experiences that happen to have grown up in locations where the gardeners of the contemporary, modern soul have not cultivated anything. Also place most of reality itself. It’s too tough and too wild and too wicked for the contemporary mind to try to come to terms with.
It’s not so much that the contemporary, educated person cannot come to terms with the historical existence of slavery, but they actively resist acknowledging even the slightest thing that is not already part of their purview. They view it as evil and undigestable. They may even downvote any attempts to communicate to them about it, on YouTube.
Well if your heart isn’t in what you are doing and you have to do that job day in and day out, that is degrading to the mind and body. Certainly it is not “slavery” in the sense of being owned by a particular person and being required not to leave the premises. But it can be very degrading.
I do think people need to start using words with greater care, so that they do not make their own emotional concerns seem to be at the centre of the universe, though. Supposing I communicate to others, as the author may be trying to do, my sense of degradation at work, but I can’t take into account greater extremes of oppression, or variations of it, because I have already used the available words with too great a rhetorical effect in service of myself — well then I have exhausted communication even before I have begun engaging with others.
That is perhaps the problem with most forms of political correctness today. They immediately exhaust the possibilities of communication though the extreme use of language as a rhetorical device. One either agrees with the speaker or walks away shaking one’s head.
But outside the world of narrow, perspectival manipulation, reality opens up. At least, it has the potential to do so. Really, I think the problem with much of contemporary academia, in the humanities, is that it is stuck in this mode of limited, perspectival management. And this tendency toward socially engineering what kinds of meanings are permitted to be expressed is deeply entrenched in much of general society as a whole. That is why I have not been able to express very simple and even banal things about my past, but had to write a book to get thse things out of my system. People would stop me and imply I’m not permitted to speak of them. And then they would go to work on me, trying to manipulate my perspective so that I would take in reality in a much more narrow and socially contrived filter.
And in fact, that was quite traumatising, not because of the views I was expected to embrace as such, but because I was not permitted even to say the very plain and trivial things I wanted to relate about my past experiences in Africa. If you can’t relate even matter of fact things, you cannot make a cultural transition from one state of mind to another.
So, in fact that was why I chose not to pursue an academic career, because I can’t walk around in that kind of a straitjacket. It’s not only uncomfortable, but is is unhealthy. One would have first be mad enough to accept it. Some people are, and they comply to a limited degree.
But most people in the humanities are taught to use language to keep out what they sense to be “evil”. Under the label of “evil”, put the unknown, the wild that is just beyond the borders of suburban consciousness, the capacity for free thinking, experiences that happen to have grown up in locations where the gardeners of the contemporary, modern soul have not cultivated anything. Also place most of reality itself. It’s too tough and too wild and too wicked for the contemporary mind to try to come to terms with.
It’s not so much that the contemporary, educated person cannot come to terms with the historical existence of slavery, but they actively resist acknowledging even the slightest thing that is not already part of their purview. They view it as evil and undigestable. They may even downvote any attempts to communicate to them about it, on YouTube.
Wednesday 12 February 2014
Five lessons from Rhodesia - Nehanda Radio
Five lessons from Rhodesia - Nehanda Radio
Oh, this article ought to get some reaction! I suppose one might view Smith's policies as true conservatism -- but now we are in an age of neoliberalism and selling the country's assets to buy entry into a global economy. Quite a risk. I speak from the point of view of what is happening in Australia.
Oh, this article ought to get some reaction! I suppose one might view Smith's policies as true conservatism -- but now we are in an age of neoliberalism and selling the country's assets to buy entry into a global economy. Quite a risk. I speak from the point of view of what is happening in Australia.
It is an open secret that Zimbabwe has all it needs to develop and yet we continue to complain about how sanctions are preventing that. In my opinion, it is not the issue of sanctions that is our problem (real or imagined); it’s our response to our problems that continues to hold us back and disempower us in coming up with our own solutions.
I think that the main reason why Rhodesia’s self-sufficiency developed rapidly during its import substitution programme was the discipline and integrity of its leadership; racist they were, but here I want us to learn from the enemy.
Ian Smith was not in it for the money or personal wealth. He truly believed in the national cause. Although misguided, he was dedicated to it to the bone. He was not greedy nor did he pursue personal wealth accumulation as is the case with our current political leadership. The preservation and development of Rhodesia came first and all state enterprises and institutions were established and competently managed only to meet that end.
Seeing oneself from the outside
How Thinking About Others Improves Our Creativity | Psychology Today
More advantages in seeing oneself from the outside:
More advantages in seeing oneself from the outside:
This isn’t just the creative power of altruism. The results strengthen an the theory that when we think of the situations we are in, we tend to think more concretely and can struggle to generate new ideas, whereas when we think about the situations others are in, especially situations distant from our own reality, we tend to widen our perspective and generate ideas that are a little more abstract—more like the creative ideas we might need.
Mike & Jennifer at play
Fitness training and boxing with Mike from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.
Just getting fitter with some light sparring practice after fitness class
Subjectivity and the heights and depths of the individual's being
Subjectivity and the heights and depths of the individual's being from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.
This has to do with developing a personal sense of spirituality and individual self-will. Contemporary culture teaches you to flatten your subjectivity, but even the pains experienced can be interesting and valuable.
Tuesday 11 February 2014
Imbibe safely
Well, in fact can someone find healing by Ayahuasca or by LSD? Some people report that they can, but most people do not have the knowledge or internal discipline to be anything other than crazier, especially Americans who go to South America and other places to try to get a shamanic experience. But the whole of modernity, their internalized modern thinking, has made them very passive and the victim of charlatans. So, no healing for them, just exploitation at the hands of some third world fellow.
Perspective and how we have been trained to look at the world DOES MATTER, despite the current wisdom that we are all essentially the same. You can't have a drug-induced dissociative experience and gain something from it if there are no teeth in the brain for the experiences to break on.
Perspective and how we have been trained to look at the world DOES MATTER, despite the current wisdom that we are all essentially the same. You can't have a drug-induced dissociative experience and gain something from it if there are no teeth in the brain for the experiences to break on.
THE NOTION OF FIXED IDENTITIES
THE NOTION OF FIXED IDENTITIES from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.
The belief in the fixed nature of identities is unwarranted and can create a lot of mental distress.
Monday 10 February 2014
Brave new world
Monday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog
Australia is entering a nice new free market era. It may sound like mysticism and it may be mysticism, but we cross our fingers in the approximate shape of a Christian cross and hope for the best. There will be no more protected industries, except the mining industry, which is free not to have to pay much tax. Manufacturing can depart, thus liberating the workers to find other sorts of jobs that may interest them. Some of them may wish to become prime minister of Australia. That is up to them. But it is not fair to the African workers to pay Australians more than what is on offer in developing countries. We know that where there is a will there is a way. Zimbabwean cops may only be paid $US 150 per month, but they stop cars and scrutinise the papers and can hint about allowing you to get more quickly to your destination if you alleviate yourself of your petty cash. So there is no reason why anybody in the world cannot make ends meet. They just have to want to do so enough.
And there is no reason for elderly or disabled people to have pensions, because that is not one of the principles of a completely free market. Don’t they have families to take care of them? In Zimbabwe, if you are disabled, you sit outside a shopping centre asking for money, until the police chase you away or give you a hiding. You can also try selling homemade trinkets to foreigners. Poverty encourages entreprise.
I think Australians could learn a lot from Zimbabweans and our government believes so too. I would be inclined to set up a shop to teach them Shona so they can assimilate, but few people are enterprising enough to take up my offer.
Australia is entering a nice new free market era. It may sound like mysticism and it may be mysticism, but we cross our fingers in the approximate shape of a Christian cross and hope for the best. There will be no more protected industries, except the mining industry, which is free not to have to pay much tax. Manufacturing can depart, thus liberating the workers to find other sorts of jobs that may interest them. Some of them may wish to become prime minister of Australia. That is up to them. But it is not fair to the African workers to pay Australians more than what is on offer in developing countries. We know that where there is a will there is a way. Zimbabwean cops may only be paid $US 150 per month, but they stop cars and scrutinise the papers and can hint about allowing you to get more quickly to your destination if you alleviate yourself of your petty cash. So there is no reason why anybody in the world cannot make ends meet. They just have to want to do so enough.
And there is no reason for elderly or disabled people to have pensions, because that is not one of the principles of a completely free market. Don’t they have families to take care of them? In Zimbabwe, if you are disabled, you sit outside a shopping centre asking for money, until the police chase you away or give you a hiding. You can also try selling homemade trinkets to foreigners. Poverty encourages entreprise.
I think Australians could learn a lot from Zimbabweans and our government believes so too. I would be inclined to set up a shop to teach them Shona so they can assimilate, but few people are enterprising enough to take up my offer.
Sunday 9 February 2014
Letting the wild text be wild
You won't get much benefit from an intellectual shamanic text if you try to tame it first! Nonetheless, that is most people's natural inclination. I think they have lost touch with something fundamental to their beings when they try this.
Cf.
http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/vulgar-and-dastardly.html
Bee enters gothic hair
Bee attacks gothic menace from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.
The feverish desire to get whatever you can without thought for ethics and limits (and especially to get something for free) and the ideology that holds we are basically all the same. Are the two perhaps linked in the Western descent into self-ridicule and barbarism? Meanwhile, a bee enters my hair.
The flavor of the day is: moron
Addictions | Clarissa's Blog
See what I mean? This is totally bizzare. I am talking about my experiences here and for some reason at least one person cannot take this. They want to downvote an experience. i wish they would stand up and speak for themselves. Perhaps they have never had any experiences of their own and so are hostile to them. Or they downvote the fact that some of my experiences were not as pleasant as they might have been. In which case, thank you!
But I do see it as a sign of severe idiocy to downvote someone’s experiences without explanation. Those are just things that occurred. If you want to reverse history for me, you will need more than a simple thumbs down. Too trite.
Saturday 8 February 2014
Existential context
Embracing the truth about death is good for your health from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.
It puts material reality into its material context.
Friday 7 February 2014
Chimp chatter
A Horrible Suspicion Just Visited Me | Clarissa's Blog
Chimp chatter. "Stay out of the kitchen" and "boys will be boys". If I really despise someone, I never see any harm in letting them do what they were going to do anyway. I let, for instance, boys be boys. Now, I happen to know certain things that would make their lives less squalid and more fulfilled, but they are intent on being "boys". Meanwhile, I've actually stolen fire from the men. I really have. I've figured it all out -- what they men were keeping from me. I understand, for instance, the secrets of war and of warfare. Consequently, there is nothing I need from the boys, and I can leave them to their homilies and platitudinizing. It must give them comfort to know there is something in which they automatically excel.
Chimp chatter. "Stay out of the kitchen" and "boys will be boys". If I really despise someone, I never see any harm in letting them do what they were going to do anyway. I let, for instance, boys be boys. Now, I happen to know certain things that would make their lives less squalid and more fulfilled, but they are intent on being "boys". Meanwhile, I've actually stolen fire from the men. I really have. I've figured it all out -- what they men were keeping from me. I understand, for instance, the secrets of war and of warfare. Consequently, there is nothing I need from the boys, and I can leave them to their homilies and platitudinizing. It must give them comfort to know there is something in which they automatically excel.
Thursday 6 February 2014
One is not like the other
Taking your mind to another level of awareness from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.
"And the blindness of the blind one, and his seeking and groping, shall yet testify to the power of the sun into which he hath gazed,--did ye know that before?"--Nietzsche
Shamanic trickster
Shamanic laughter and reality from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.
The wisdom and reality-consolidating measure of shamanic laughter. Nietzsche, Marechera and Bataille all seem to recognise just how much shamanic laughter consolidates and recognises the tragic nature of life in a way that the conventional traditions of asceticism can't seem to muster. Those keep you holding on for a perfect time in an unspecified future, thus extending the illusion and the misery. Tragic laughter recognises things as they are and breaks the spell.
Vulgar and dastardly
Manly Women and Wikipedia | Clarissa's Blog
Something I've been reflecting on lately is that it is all just a game, this feminine-feminism, much like most things in US life are a marketing ploy. People say the sorts of things that others are already primed to respond to, so that they can get marketing leverage. It is much like using the basic appetites -- sex, hunger, desire for recognition -- to sell sugary beverages. If people are primed to feel guilty about not including women, this can be played upon to get the writer of the article about Wikipedia notoriety and funding support. She certainly does not have to mean every word she says. Those words are for leverage, on a deep emotional level, not meaning.
In terms of something slightly different from that, the expansion of traditional feminine modes of perception, reaction and behavior, into the mainstream is, I think, recognisable in the demand that other entities ought not to stand apart from the one who judges them, but be one with the judger and melded into a particular shape by him or her. This extends to much of literary theory as it is currently practiced. For instance you will find people asserting that the author has "gone too far" or made a structural mistake in his or her mode of writing. I noticed this most strongly when studying the criticism that had accrued on Marechera's writing. For the most part the critics seemed to become out of breath and confused very easily, at which point they would return to that which was already familiar to them, like the concept of fixed identities, or proper social structure or a good upbringing. They couldn't really extend themselves very far beyond their anchors in convention.
But what if the author writes a paranoid book not as a mistake, or because he can't contain himself to write a more sane and sensible book, but because he WANTS us to feel paranoid? That level of artistry is hard for the majority of critics to countenance, but there is no a priori reason why this could not be so.
That we cannot know for sure what a book like BLACK SUNLIGHT is about, but still we think we recognise certain familiar shapes and forms in it, gives it a paranoid aura in relation to us, the readers. If a reader starts the book with a feeling of political certainty that war and/or revolution are desirable and for the best, by the end of the book one is left alone with oneself and with a feeling of extreme paranoia about both war and revolution and their viability. It is a paranoid book, written by someone who involuntarily lived through a revolutionary war and suffered as a consequence of that.
If you can't take in that message as a critic, perhaps a differerent job would be more suitable for you. It's just too conventionally feminine to want to make the author part of one's own already existing system of values and beliefs and to berate him in a motherly fashion for going outside the bounds of what would be considered normal in one's own society. "I chide him because I love him and I want him to do better!"
To demand that others be a part of you so that you can manage them better, shape them, and turn them into what you want them to be, is archetypal feminine relating. It is the typical manner with which managers, identity politicians, teachers and critics approach the subject today. They do not allow anything to stand apart from them, to be a thing separate from the mother/teacher/critic. They don't seem to even have the courage to say, "I hate this thing! I'm going to let it go." Their instincts are to draw everything under the control, by not permitting separation.
This means you can't learn a complex lesson from a writer who is trying to teach you about your political over-certainties. You can't even see that lesson, because you are too busy trying to impart your own about how there are certain things than can and cannot be said, in terms of your own existing perspective.
The feminine mode is like this though. It always tries to "shape" the other right away, rather than reach an understanding of what that person or thing is in its own right. It doesn't even see anything separate from itself, just some amorphous mess to be reshaped.
And abusers are the same. They come along and try to shape things, on the basis of the feelings about what ought to be in place. But this betrays their lack of a desire to even try to understand what has actually come to be in place of its own accord, and in its own right, independently of the manager/critic/abuser. They don't even have a faculty for handling real otherness -- yet, many of them will talk endlessly about "the other". Nothing they love better than talking about themselves!
Something I've been reflecting on lately is that it is all just a game, this feminine-feminism, much like most things in US life are a marketing ploy. People say the sorts of things that others are already primed to respond to, so that they can get marketing leverage. It is much like using the basic appetites -- sex, hunger, desire for recognition -- to sell sugary beverages. If people are primed to feel guilty about not including women, this can be played upon to get the writer of the article about Wikipedia notoriety and funding support. She certainly does not have to mean every word she says. Those words are for leverage, on a deep emotional level, not meaning.
In terms of something slightly different from that, the expansion of traditional feminine modes of perception, reaction and behavior, into the mainstream is, I think, recognisable in the demand that other entities ought not to stand apart from the one who judges them, but be one with the judger and melded into a particular shape by him or her. This extends to much of literary theory as it is currently practiced. For instance you will find people asserting that the author has "gone too far" or made a structural mistake in his or her mode of writing. I noticed this most strongly when studying the criticism that had accrued on Marechera's writing. For the most part the critics seemed to become out of breath and confused very easily, at which point they would return to that which was already familiar to them, like the concept of fixed identities, or proper social structure or a good upbringing. They couldn't really extend themselves very far beyond their anchors in convention.
But what if the author writes a paranoid book not as a mistake, or because he can't contain himself to write a more sane and sensible book, but because he WANTS us to feel paranoid? That level of artistry is hard for the majority of critics to countenance, but there is no a priori reason why this could not be so.
That we cannot know for sure what a book like BLACK SUNLIGHT is about, but still we think we recognise certain familiar shapes and forms in it, gives it a paranoid aura in relation to us, the readers. If a reader starts the book with a feeling of political certainty that war and/or revolution are desirable and for the best, by the end of the book one is left alone with oneself and with a feeling of extreme paranoia about both war and revolution and their viability. It is a paranoid book, written by someone who involuntarily lived through a revolutionary war and suffered as a consequence of that.
If you can't take in that message as a critic, perhaps a differerent job would be more suitable for you. It's just too conventionally feminine to want to make the author part of one's own already existing system of values and beliefs and to berate him in a motherly fashion for going outside the bounds of what would be considered normal in one's own society. "I chide him because I love him and I want him to do better!"
To demand that others be a part of you so that you can manage them better, shape them, and turn them into what you want them to be, is archetypal feminine relating. It is the typical manner with which managers, identity politicians, teachers and critics approach the subject today. They do not allow anything to stand apart from them, to be a thing separate from the mother/teacher/critic. They don't seem to even have the courage to say, "I hate this thing! I'm going to let it go." Their instincts are to draw everything under the control, by not permitting separation.
This means you can't learn a complex lesson from a writer who is trying to teach you about your political over-certainties. You can't even see that lesson, because you are too busy trying to impart your own about how there are certain things than can and cannot be said, in terms of your own existing perspective.
The feminine mode is like this though. It always tries to "shape" the other right away, rather than reach an understanding of what that person or thing is in its own right. It doesn't even see anything separate from itself, just some amorphous mess to be reshaped.
And abusers are the same. They come along and try to shape things, on the basis of the feelings about what ought to be in place. But this betrays their lack of a desire to even try to understand what has actually come to be in place of its own accord, and in its own right, independently of the manager/critic/abuser. They don't even have a faculty for handling real otherness -- yet, many of them will talk endlessly about "the other". Nothing they love better than talking about themselves!
Manly Women and Wikipedia | Clarissa's Blog
Manly Women and Wikipedia | Clarissa's Blog
I'm not by any means cold and argumentative, although I be a mean intellectual poker player if I am very angry indeed. But mostly, I am in the mode of crude banter. This separates the boys from the apes and the women from the boys. If people don't like it or understand it, they probably want to give me lots of space around myself.
I'm not by any means cold and argumentative, although I be a mean intellectual poker player if I am very angry indeed. But mostly, I am in the mode of crude banter. This separates the boys from the apes and the women from the boys. If people don't like it or understand it, they probably want to give me lots of space around myself.
What steven pinker gets right
1. Learning is necessarily an artificial process. One has to still the animal within, or have it stilled by somebody externally. You can't learn in a 'natural' way -- that is, animalistically.
2. The idea of leftists that they can continually shape or model personalities is wrongheaded. I will add, it is also reprehensible. Idiots have been trying to reshape and remodel me over two decades. When I complained about the offensive nature of their actions, they turned around and said I didn't know who I was. So then they added another level to their abuse.
These are the two points on which I agree with the ideologue of the late 90s, early 00s.
As for the story he tells as a whole, I think what he fleshes in and what he leaves out tells a story, or creates a gestalt impression that is predominantly ideological in nature.
For instance, the idea of male honor is elaborated upon, but no concept of human honor that also extends to women is mentioned.
This means that people who treat women like myself in an offensive way have to learn the hard way that this tendency to overlook important matters actually matters -- i.e has repercussions.
2. The idea of leftists that they can continually shape or model personalities is wrongheaded. I will add, it is also reprehensible. Idiots have been trying to reshape and remodel me over two decades. When I complained about the offensive nature of their actions, they turned around and said I didn't know who I was. So then they added another level to their abuse.
These are the two points on which I agree with the ideologue of the late 90s, early 00s.
As for the story he tells as a whole, I think what he fleshes in and what he leaves out tells a story, or creates a gestalt impression that is predominantly ideological in nature.
For instance, the idea of male honor is elaborated upon, but no concept of human honor that also extends to women is mentioned.
This means that people who treat women like myself in an offensive way have to learn the hard way that this tendency to overlook important matters actually matters -- i.e has repercussions.
45
If you don't know, by the age of 45, whether some characteristic is part of your inherent nature or just a piece of an ideology, you have failed in your life's mission, which is, or ought to be self-determination through self-knowledge. You are older, but not there yet and maybe won't ever reach a point of succesful self-understanding.
Somebody who says, for instance, that they are genetically predisposed to be gravely concerned about their expanding midriff, but biologically are determined to have such an enlarged mid-section no matter what, has (at least partly) failed to understand what it inside her and what originates from the outside.
Nobody is genetically predisposed to have any particular view on body image, for nothing so simple is going to be so inevitable.
To be inclined to such assumptions means the person concerned has lived a significant portion of their life with an undisciplined mind.
Undisciplined minds are not inevitable either, although they are as common as the suburban grass.
Somebody who says, for instance, that they are genetically predisposed to be gravely concerned about their expanding midriff, but biologically are determined to have such an enlarged mid-section no matter what, has (at least partly) failed to understand what it inside her and what originates from the outside.
Nobody is genetically predisposed to have any particular view on body image, for nothing so simple is going to be so inevitable.
To be inclined to such assumptions means the person concerned has lived a significant portion of their life with an undisciplined mind.
Undisciplined minds are not inevitable either, although they are as common as the suburban grass.
Tuesday 4 February 2014
Punk presentation
Punk presentation: how conformity is the opposite to excess from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.
And why you might want to consider investing in the latter (excess) as the better option for your mental health.
So I solve one of my own puzzles.
If, like me, you immerse yourself deeply in philosophical literature, this may cause you to draw certain conclusions out of extending the logical structure of the paradigm. But then you forget why and how you did it. That is what became my fate.
I wondered why I stated so emphatically that the height of achievement regarding shamanic initiation was "to see oneself from the outside". But now it all makes sense. Once you have solved all your problems from the inside, from within the womb of subjectivity, you have no choice but to see yourself from the outside, as if you had become a problem solved and capable of being observed.
But that also implies a facing of death and of one's limits. One was bound by the political and psychological dynamics (really the same thing from different angles) of the time. But now one understands those, one is no longer affected by them, at least not from the point of view of subjectivity. To put it differently, one is no longer IMMERSED in them. One sees these dynamics from the outside, and thus one sees oneself, as one had been, from the outside. That is transcendence of the limited mode of consciousness one had been in.
People who see subjectivity and objectivity as POLAR opposites, rather than dialectic (that is, intertwining) opposites, will not understand why one has to first immerse oneself into subjectivity in order to become fully objective. Nonetheless, those who would take a short-cut by immediately proclaiming their own objectivity about matters relating to their selves will remain, paradoxically as it may seem, immersed in subjectivity.
When somebody is deeply contained by their own subjectivity, they do not differentiate their perceptions from common sense. Whatever they perceive, they hold to be reflective of reality itself. Indeed, even the word "reflective" gives them too much credit. If they emote something, that becomes a perception -- the perception is deemed to be the same as reality.
One must separate what pertains to oneself and what pertains to others. Otherwise one is not worthy of intellectual debate. In effect, one must "see oneself from the outside", having made sense of all the subjective dynamics that had captivated one's mind. Only then will one see how entrapped others remain to their subjective dynamics.
But to see everything in this way implies accepting a certain amount of death into one's being -- a closing off of the subjective access to the past. One sees oneself from the outside in the same way that the spirit does when it is leaving the body, figuratively speaking.
I wondered why I stated so emphatically that the height of achievement regarding shamanic initiation was "to see oneself from the outside". But now it all makes sense. Once you have solved all your problems from the inside, from within the womb of subjectivity, you have no choice but to see yourself from the outside, as if you had become a problem solved and capable of being observed.
But that also implies a facing of death and of one's limits. One was bound by the political and psychological dynamics (really the same thing from different angles) of the time. But now one understands those, one is no longer affected by them, at least not from the point of view of subjectivity. To put it differently, one is no longer IMMERSED in them. One sees these dynamics from the outside, and thus one sees oneself, as one had been, from the outside. That is transcendence of the limited mode of consciousness one had been in.
People who see subjectivity and objectivity as POLAR opposites, rather than dialectic (that is, intertwining) opposites, will not understand why one has to first immerse oneself into subjectivity in order to become fully objective. Nonetheless, those who would take a short-cut by immediately proclaiming their own objectivity about matters relating to their selves will remain, paradoxically as it may seem, immersed in subjectivity.
When somebody is deeply contained by their own subjectivity, they do not differentiate their perceptions from common sense. Whatever they perceive, they hold to be reflective of reality itself. Indeed, even the word "reflective" gives them too much credit. If they emote something, that becomes a perception -- the perception is deemed to be the same as reality.
One must separate what pertains to oneself and what pertains to others. Otherwise one is not worthy of intellectual debate. In effect, one must "see oneself from the outside", having made sense of all the subjective dynamics that had captivated one's mind. Only then will one see how entrapped others remain to their subjective dynamics.
But to see everything in this way implies accepting a certain amount of death into one's being -- a closing off of the subjective access to the past. One sees oneself from the outside in the same way that the spirit does when it is leaving the body, figuratively speaking.
I Don’t Want to Look Kooky and New Agey | Clarissa's Blog
I Don’t Want to Look Kooky and New Agey | Clarissa's Blog
Yesterday I listened to some people on TV who lived in Latvia and were speaking a language I could not understand. I said to Mike, “Their English is really poor. I can’t understand a word.”
Later, a right-wing German immigrant, who happens to be in government spoke about his political agenda. “Deport him to Venezuela!” I shouted.
My beliefs are very firm about things.
Monday 3 February 2014
Ask Clarissa | Clarissa's Blog
Ask Clarissa | Clarissa's Blog
My whole school system was based around the nerd. There were no popularity contexts, except among those who had been socialised in the industrialized first world, including South Africa. We grativated toward certain schemas — for the boys that was the military pattern — but we had no real socialization or in or out groups.
My whole school system was based around the nerd. There were no popularity contexts, except among those who had been socialised in the industrialized first world, including South Africa. We grativated toward certain schemas — for the boys that was the military pattern — but we had no real socialization or in or out groups.
Repost
Mike says I should write about morality so here’s the problem as I see it. There is life and life is the flurry of real attitudes, actualities and events. After these events have all taken place, that is after history has transpired, certain people try to make sense of what has happened. Some of these people may be very inexperienced in life. They’ve grown up in such a way that others have regulated a lot of their experiences, so that they don’t need to make difficult choices or perhaps they have not grown up all that much at all, so that they feel that goodness is the same as being passive. In any case, these people look at the events that have transpired in history and instead of understanding them, they make exclamations of alarm. It’s almost like they think the whole of history shouldn’t have happened just so they can stay contained in their narrow, uncontaminated existence. They don’t love the mess of life, which is understandable, but they assume that everybody would be better off living just like them — or even that this would be possible in the long term.
Well, they are self-deceived because their regulated fish tank existence is highly artificial and had to be put in place by people who were able to think outside the format of this overly controlled existence.
That’s what’s wrong with moral posturing and posing. It’s usually done by people who don’t like things to be too complicated for them. They don’t take into account that life itself has this primeval nature of oozy complexity. That upsets them.
People who view cultural differences as having to do with morality choices or moral stature or principles of right and wrong and not thinking deeply enough, but this level of superficiality is endemic to our times. We find it hard to take into account primeval ooze, the substance of reality, just because we are not exposed to it enough. We see only the rocks and leaves that others have placed into our existence.
When reading my writing, understand that I have not fending off the finer faculties of discrimination or discernment about life. Not at all. Rather I am standing for integration and complexity.
Try and figure it out. That’s hard.
Well, they are self-deceived because their regulated fish tank existence is highly artificial and had to be put in place by people who were able to think outside the format of this overly controlled existence.
That’s what’s wrong with moral posturing and posing. It’s usually done by people who don’t like things to be too complicated for them. They don’t take into account that life itself has this primeval nature of oozy complexity. That upsets them.
People who view cultural differences as having to do with morality choices or moral stature or principles of right and wrong and not thinking deeply enough, but this level of superficiality is endemic to our times. We find it hard to take into account primeval ooze, the substance of reality, just because we are not exposed to it enough. We see only the rocks and leaves that others have placed into our existence.
When reading my writing, understand that I have not fending off the finer faculties of discrimination or discernment about life. Not at all. Rather I am standing for integration and complexity.
Try and figure it out. That’s hard.
Redemption through despair
Bataille's atheistic religion and despair from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.
This video also concerns Bataille's negative dialectic or the exposure to "nothing". It's not at all scientific to assume that the salience of points have a fundamental existence outside of your mind.
Atheistic "mysticism" differs from religiosity a few steps further up the mountainside at the point where hope turns into despair and one's despair becomes redemptive. I'm not really arguing that one should embrace this perspective, only that it is the natural consequence to a long climb in relation to Western metaphysics. At the higher reaches of the summit, unlearning/nonknowledge becomes key to advancing, instead of requiring a further acquisition of knowledge.
Cf. http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/time-has-come-walrus.html
Sunday 2 February 2014
Shadow sides
Hopeless Europeans | Clarissa's Blog
If people are terrified of their own shadow to the point that they cannot think straight, I wonder why that would be? Australians tend to never mention that they are colonial powers in relation to the Aboriginals, but they are very, very angry at white people from Africa. It seems that their shadow suddenly becomes visible to them at times -- but only when they look to Africa.
If people are terrified of their own shadow to the point that they cannot think straight, I wonder why that would be? Australians tend to never mention that they are colonial powers in relation to the Aboriginals, but they are very, very angry at white people from Africa. It seems that their shadow suddenly becomes visible to them at times -- but only when they look to Africa.
Sunday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog
Sunday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog
I have no idea what the subtle nuances of a word are, as I am not American. I do think people need to figure out what and why something bothers them, though, rather than using words that have an objective aura but no content. That is intellectually cheap. But even professors and all sorts of people can be intellectually cheap, especially when they have to function outside of their subject area. As for me, if I am ever described as problematic I will find that amusing. I am way, way, beyond the boundaries of where "problematic" was last sighted -- so distant in fact that I may even seem to be my opposite. I may seem bubbly and light and full of thin air like your ideal champagne.
I have no idea what the subtle nuances of a word are, as I am not American. I do think people need to figure out what and why something bothers them, though, rather than using words that have an objective aura but no content. That is intellectually cheap. But even professors and all sorts of people can be intellectually cheap, especially when they have to function outside of their subject area. As for me, if I am ever described as problematic I will find that amusing. I am way, way, beyond the boundaries of where "problematic" was last sighted -- so distant in fact that I may even seem to be my opposite. I may seem bubbly and light and full of thin air like your ideal champagne.
Saturday 1 February 2014
psychological roots of pathology
The Metaphysical Reason for Germany’s Well-Being | Clarissa's Blog
I wonder if collective guilt acknowledges the projective identification, which is behind the persecution of minorities. The primitive notion, "we have an enemy within", which can be identified and destroyed/cast out in order to purify and thus "save" the community tends to run beneath the level of conscious awareness. It afflicts communities that are very stressed and therefore inclined to adopt regressive modes of coping.
I think that whenever communities become very stressed they are in high danger of creating another scapegoat to purify themselves and try to change their bad luck into good luck.
Reparations are one thing, and I have no comment on those, although in some circumstances they would be a good idea. But I don't think they get to the psychological roots.
2. The minute you make it all about one group, another group has already become victim and then another. Hard to keep up. I do think that collective guilt has actually worked to CAUSE more stress and thus MORE projective identification in much of the Western world. I point this out, but because I am considered one of the evil ones, I may as well be speaking to the air. Paranoia increases with guilt and insight deteriorates.
I wonder if collective guilt acknowledges the projective identification, which is behind the persecution of minorities. The primitive notion, "we have an enemy within", which can be identified and destroyed/cast out in order to purify and thus "save" the community tends to run beneath the level of conscious awareness. It afflicts communities that are very stressed and therefore inclined to adopt regressive modes of coping.
I think that whenever communities become very stressed they are in high danger of creating another scapegoat to purify themselves and try to change their bad luck into good luck.
Reparations are one thing, and I have no comment on those, although in some circumstances they would be a good idea. But I don't think they get to the psychological roots.
2. The minute you make it all about one group, another group has already become victim and then another. Hard to keep up. I do think that collective guilt has actually worked to CAUSE more stress and thus MORE projective identification in much of the Western world. I point this out, but because I am considered one of the evil ones, I may as well be speaking to the air. Paranoia increases with guilt and insight deteriorates.
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