Friday 30 May 2014

Too Freudian | Clarissa's Blog

Too Freudian | Clarissa's Blog



bg said:
“Well, supposedly somebody has to be blamed, hell, you desperately needed to blame the MRA ;-D The kid had therapy since he was eight, and often with multiple therapists. Anybody reading his writing senses something sick, something wrong, something missing.”
Being wrenched from one’s country of origin is never good for you. It’s what shamanism recognises, that contemporary psychology does not. To lose your original environment, where you were happy, is a tragic loss. It is worse if you are not prepared for that, if you have gained deep psychological attunement to that, and if you lose it suddenly.
We do end up with missing parts and the shamanic term is “soul loss”.

Remove your mental and emotional protective barriers

Remove your mental and emotional protective barriers from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.

Woundedness: Elliot Rodger, dryness & shamanic initiation

Thursday 29 May 2014

The divided lens of consciousness distorts reality

Real feminism and what it takes

Outlaw MRAs! | Clarissa's Blog



"- I hate, hate, hate it when people mask psychological issues under the guise of political activism. This goes both for pseudo-feminists who confuse crappy personal lives and daddy issues with feminism and the MRAs who confuse crappy personal lives and mommy issues with fighting for gender equality. I feel extreme contempt for creatures that are so incapable of self-awareness."

This is interesting because in my case my fight toward a more feminist level of consciousness and my "daddy issues", as it were, were deeply intertwined and related.   And consciously, I knew that they were, that my capacity to think for myself was deeply threatened by an internalized sense of my father's profound rage.   He was angry at a number of issues and most of them had social origins and meanings in relation to gender.



For instance



1.  He was extremely angry at his mother for marrying a step-father who abused him emotionally.  His mother had had no choice but to remarry very quickly after his biological father died in action in WW2.


2.  He was extremely angry at losing the war in Rhodesia, and blamed, as it seems, feminine or socialist traits in the world at large for his sense of betrayal.


3.  He couldn't make a swift adjustment to the new social environment and start again easily from a lower social status, and was extremely angry about that.


4.  His abuse by his stepfather and emotional neglect by his mother at a very early age had given him a borderline personality disorder, which became salient whenever he felt under stress.


So, I myself had to grow up under circumstances of extreme hostility, where my father basically replayed the scenario of his own rejection by his step-father and his rage at his mother in relation to me.  At times he was the hostile and demeaning step-father (in relation to me) and he was the raging two-year old, tearing strips off his "mother" (who I seemed to represent to him, at times) and hurling abuse about allegedly weaker feminine traits.



Now, add to this mix:



5.  That he had been in the army for much of his life, indeed from his teenage years, and that an extremely common tendency in the military is to hurl abuse at others by accusing them of having "soft" or feminine traits in order to toughen them up.  Misogyny is psychologically systematized in the military.



So I hope I have now explained to modern people, who still don't get it, why my relationship with my father was so pivotal to developing a feminist consciousness.



I'm sure that other people haven't had to bring themselves up within a blizzard of extreme animosity, but I had to try to do this, and I finally succeeded after many years.



I don't take kindly to people to misunderstand or minimize my efforts, which were substantial.

Emotional barriers, while useful, put limits on your knowledge

Wednesday 28 May 2014

Philosophically objectively stupid statements

An Aide for the Sexually Unsuccessful | Clarissa's Blog

An Aide for the Sexually Unsuccessful | Clarissa's Blog





I already sense that starting to happen.  They are playing with dangerous explosives and hurting those the closest to them, which is bound to start to cause some pain sensations.   It's  almost like Elliot was the tip of a boil with its roots deep into the skin of Western culture.  Now perhaps we can see what was there and the boil may be in the process of being lanced.



For too long, when it has been women's pain, women have been easily ignored on the basis of the facile allegation:  "oh, you are just being sensitive and emotional".  



The pain really has to start to hurt the perpetrators and would-be perps before the deeper nature of the cultural issue can be realized and come to terms with.



And I think that is starting to happen.

Georges Bataille's "formlessness" as shamanic initiation

Meditation on postmodernism and the nature of ideology

Swim!

Parting shot: you don't see what you "see".

Modalities of sacrifice

Tuesday 27 May 2014

Are we witnessing the emergence of the United States of Australia? | Warwick Smith | Comment is free | theguardian.com

Are we witnessing the emergence of the United States of Australia? | Warwick Smith | Comment is free | theguardian.com



If we consider the wellbeing of all Australians to be important then the Scandinavian model is the clear winner. We can and should increase the proportion of GDP taken in tax and use it to provide the best opportunities to our young people and the best quality of life we can to society’s vulnerable, regardless of where or to whom they were born. This means first class universal education and healthcare and the guarantee of a decent standard of living. If these are not our aims then what is the point of economic progress?

Emotion

Emotion and sensitivity seem to be American issues.  Women are supposed to embody those qualities and men not have anything to do with them at all.

But I see that, for instance, if one's character is heavily anchored in stoicism, like Japanese people, one can permit oneself a higher level of surface emotions without that being evidence of mental instability.   But if one has no anchor---watch out for seemingly calm surfaces!

Thinking About the Economy: Solutions | Clarissa's Blog

Thinking About the Economy: Solutions | Clarissa's Blog




I think you may be making a very basic error right here:
“Governmental spending is out because that’s all borrowed money and we’ve already seen what it costs to pretend that fake money is real.”
Government spending is in fact very different from bank loans.
All governments in fact do need to borrow some money to some degree, because only short term economic sustainability is possible otherwise. Japan has one of the highest govenment debt rates in the world, but this does not imply a bubble economy.
On the other hand, a bank loan often produces a bubble, because certain items are valued as more than they are actually worth. Interest rates rise, and that may be problematic.
Government spending by itself is different as it puts money into circulation -- it puts it into the hands of consumers, who can then buy the varied and new products manufactured. This, in turn, supports the continuation of various industries and enables them to compound capital. With the capital they get, they can innovate and come up with newer and better product designs. But it all depends on the everyday person, the consumer, having money in their pockets to begin with.
Government spending may also facilitate the maintentance of existing industries by protecting the more vulnerable ones with tarrifs or by giving corporate subsidies. This assures that people can be employed by those companies locally, which means that those employees will also have more money in their pockets and can consume from other local companies.
So, in other words, from what I can gather, the running of a capitalist economy is a fine balancing game. You do need to take care of the poorest to make sure they can spend money to keep the whole thing going. That is the point of government spending. If the government stops intervening, the whole thing falls apart and cannot be sustainable in the long term. A dilligent government will borrow what it needs to, to sustain its economy. That is perfectly rational and relates to trying to support this balancing act. If the government stopped protecting the weaker people and industries, out of some purist notion, for instance the idea, “capitalism runs itself”, they will soon find out that an advanced economy cannot be sustained on the basis of a one-track idea.
It’s always, always, always a question of balance!

On having, or not having a robust character

Advice givers, narcissistic spite and gender politics--part 2

QUESTIONS OF COGNITION AND EPISTEMOLOGY:

Federal budget an attack on vulnerable Australians

POLITICAL REALISM: knowing the limits of communicability

Tuesday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog

Tuesday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog





"I'm sanitizing my syllabi all the time because of how damn sensitive everybody is."



Do you find that you use the term, "sensitive" differently from how everyone else does?  I've always felt that not only my use of this term, but my preferences for mapping it are rather different from how people would do so if actually brought within advanced Western culture.  I realize there are pejorative and more applausive connotations relating to this term, generally.



I also have a somewhat different mapping of the word, "emotional", since I would not always use it pejoratively, although the tendency seems to be to relegate it to a negative meaning.



I think, generally, what I have noticed about the Western psyche is a certain fragility, concerning which  Elliot Roger and others like him express only a more extreme quality.   People become alarmed very quickly by something that is outside of their range of understanding or experience. They seem to fear moral contamination.



I find it rather strange, because even many university profs are somewhat infected by this fear of the unknown.  You have to be able to persist with a strange, text, maybe over a very long duration, to find what it in it and what it is trying to say.   If you throw it away from you, for fear of moral contamination, you will at best get a limited interpretation.  You will slot the book into a predesignated paradigm rather than allowing it to speak for itself, which is much harder.



For instance, take the two extracts I have posted here about the eruption of madness.



http://musteryou.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/the-rebellious-memoir-dambudzo-marechera-versus-elliot-rodger/



Now, I think the normal Western reader would be "sensitive" as it were to Elliot's pain, because they can understand what he is saying and also feel his brittleness.  The may not like him, even, but he has made clear the nature and origins of his pains as being, from his point of view, very clearly social in origin.  Physical size is an issue of social normativity and social comparison.



Marechera's writing, however, would not speak to the average sensitive reader, as it takes a lot of processing.  Even for me at times, his writing can seem to ooze moral contamination.   One has to persist with it and get beyond one's initial reaction against the intensity of the writings.  The brittle mentality of one who feels pain as being fundamentally social in origin will not tolerate for long words that seem to ooze like blood from the page.



When one recoils against taking in a whole and thorough sense of the text, is it a case of the reader having too much sensitivity or not enough?   Marechera's may be experienced as "emotional" writing, whereas Elliot's writing is brittle and calm.  



Marechera's writing, however, is artistic and he was not a deadly psychopath.

Intellectually lazy people use moral rhetoric

Nietzsche: the lure of nature & the primeval versus artifice

Returning to the original source: yourself

The male-man and other extraordinary fictions

Monday 26 May 2014

The Abbott Form of Social Engineering (Reposted) « The Australian Independent Media Network

The Abbott Form of Social Engineering (Reposted) « The Australian Independent Media Network



We also see Social Engineering in policy and decision making. Here are a few. The broken promise on the NBN will effectively mean that those who can afford it will become information rich and those who cannot will remain information poor.

The Abbott Form of Social Engineering (Reposted) « The Australian Independent Media Network

The Abbott Form of Social Engineering (Reposted) « The Australian Independent Media Network



What is ‘’Social (political) Engineering?’’
Social Engineering is when a political party seeks to use selective deceptive, manipulative and insidious psychological techniques to influence and bring about a change in the attitudes of masses of people to its point of view.
Now let’s get to the crux of the matter. You cannot possibly believe in democracy if you believe that your party is the only one who should win. Therefore, any party who wins an election is entitled to govern.
My problem with the Abbott government is that it has embarked on a program that is ideologically targeted at changing the way we think.

The changing world & one's worth

WorkChoices has made an insidious comeback in this budget | Adam Bandt | Comment is free | theguardian.com

WorkChoices has made an insidious comeback in this budget | Adam Bandt | Comment is free | theguardian.com

Outlaw MRAs! | Clarissa's Blog

Outlaw MRAs! | Clarissa's Blog





Well ads are a source of pleasure, offering us self esteem for very little and never criticising us, except when we deserve it, so that is okay.
I wonder if many people, apart from me, notice how almost completely incapable of self-criticism the majority of consumers are? Even to point this out is already socially taboo. You’re supposed to stand back and let the good feelings abound.
To tell people that yes they really are suckers for ads and that their ideology will take them in a downward spiral is thought, by some, to be antihumanistic.
Or, if I criticise MYSELF, that is not understood as analysis, but as self-contempt, to be remedied by others doing their part.
And, when I say that those kinds of attitudes lack depth, people will react as if their feelings have been made to hurt, they have been deprived of their humanity and the words themselves should be put in quarantine.

Racial Differences | Clarissa's Blog

Racial Differences | Clarissa's Blog





It's amazing how people rant against their interests.  Like "restore the nature order, restore the natural order!"   But even in their own views, the natural order is that ten percent of the men -- the so-called alpha males -- use up all of the women.  So, well, that IS the natural order, then.  NO point yelling about restoring it.



But what about a modified social order?  Can't have that either.  That would be "cultural marxism".

Nietzsche, history and deep character structure!

Sunday 25 May 2014

immaturity

Outlaw MRAs! | Clarissa's Blog





He also keeps using the expression of "clamored" up the stairs (twice now), when I think he means, "clambered" (like an ape).



Really, the thing to do when one is down and out is to laugh at oneself.  I also had similar troubles around his age, crying every Christmas, for reasons that I didn't know why (maladjustment and not quite feeling any nourishing sensation from life).



The key is to access the negative part of the dialectic better -- one's own trauma (I hadn't acknowledged my tremendous losses in being uprooted from Africa and hence I hadn't mourned) and sexual messiness (you have to take risks, if you can find anything attractive or interesting that can lure you in).   Of course women are a little different from men, at least in my own experience, because at that age (22 or so) I wasn't that interested in sex, but more in exploring nature and the environment, which I needed to be a sensual experience at that point.



So I can understand, at least abstractly, what he is going on and on about.  Other point is that I'm from Africa where a strict hierarchy was in place (and one is never at the top) so I would never have had that sense of entitlement to go around killing people.



But certainly one has to grow OUT OF one's immaturity and there are ways to do so.

Outlaw MRAs! | Clarissa's Blog

Outlaw MRAs! | Clarissa's Blog



The elliot cretin is too funny.  I just read that each day he spent two or three hours walking around the neighborhood, and didn't meet any girl.  Each walk left him "bitterly disappointed".



There is a similar passage in Beckett's Molloy, where the character stands in the middle of an empty field and waits for someone to offer him a job, by nothing happens and he eventually leaves (after waiting the whole day) bitterly disappointed with life and the universe.

Outlaw MRAs! | Clarissa's Blog

Outlaw MRAs! | Clarissa's Blog





Yeah, their repulsiveness is caused by the sense that boundaries should never be contaminated — there should never be an “I in you” or a “you in me”. But such a supposition seals their sexual fate.
Now, all of the reason why my sex drive stays so high and why it is so succesful is my capacity to put myself into the mind and sensations of a sexually active male. I want to experience the ways in which he enjoys himself. I am, in that sense, turning myself into a male, in my imagination, but also not actually becoming one. And the results are a very high level of sexual interest, engagement and capacity.

Outlaw MRAs! | Clarissa's Blog

Outlaw MRAs! | Clarissa's Blog





"There are no “polar opposite sexes.” There is only a painful need to make these meaningless statements to allay the terror of the realization that one has been brainwashed into eating up the crappy meal of identity politics."



Actually, those who believe in polar opposite sexes will no doubt be the least sexually successful of all people, simply because embracing the notion of "I and you and you in me" is really at the core of a very robust sexuality.  So when people start to proclaim "men and women are fundamentally different and there is no overlap" what they are really saying is "we define sexuality out of existence -- then, we wonder why we are not having any sex."



Well, it is obvious, is it not?  You're afraid of contamination or you don't want to become "feminized" though too much interactive intimacy, and therefore you are not capable of any sexual experience.



The Bible tells me so.

Racial Differences | Clarissa's Blog

Racial Differences | Clarissa's Blog





I think there is little to discuss.  Australia is a colonial country and therefore many people feel that they've been caught out on the wrong side of the politically correct fence.  To deflect attention away from themselves whilst making themselves seem morally judicious, they attack white immigrants from Africa.   It is nothing more or less complex than this.



I have a Facebook friend, who was always extremely liberal in his views.  His father was condemned in South Africa for allowing his black workers to use mechanical tools, since that was considered to raise their status too much.     His father had to escape political persecution by going back to Germany.  Later Cedric (his son) migrated to Australia.



He said, "They thought I was a fascist because my hair had been cut very short when I was inducted into the South African mlitary."   He said it came really close to an all out brawl.



But never mind about the actual person, or their actual political views, some people see thing entirely in terms of national blocs and their interests.   And they never stop seeing things in that way.  There is an awesome level of superficiality.



So if you happen to have a very liberal personality, you do get attacked from all sides, by those who are "welcoming" you to your new abode and by those who hate you for betraying their original right-wing cause.



My siblings have all fared far better than I have, financially, because they have cooperated with the conservative agenda.  Me, not so much.  



But what is amazing is that the left itself has no qualms about making you continue to pay and pay.

Outlaw MRAs! | Clarissa's Blog

Outlaw MRAs! | Clarissa's Blog





I am romantically and sexually successful --- very much so.  It's weird how it came about.  I was on some Nietzsche discussion boards and then I took a wider interest in philosophy and moved onto another list.  There, some guy sent me jokes, as I was part of his jokes list.  We got talking and I said, "Well, why don't you come to Australia, as I need a man?"  He put in for a redundancy and sold his furniture and was here within a matter of months.  He had given me some money to book a motel for a few weeks.  I was exhausted from all the tension of the arrangements, so I collapsed on the bed.  He went to the shower, throwing off his stuff:  "Uncircumcised as you can see!"   And that was  December 2000.  We've been together ever since.



But you do need a certain depth of personality to pull this kind of thing off, as it were.



I think a lot of kids are brought up these days without any depth to their personalities -- which is what my latest video was sort of about.

False taint of sinfulness / re-entry to primeval experience

Racial Differences | Clarissa's Blog

Racial Differences | Clarissa's Blog







I would not be against people treating others as human beings at all, or against promoting a certain knowledge that one ought to assist those whom history has kicked in the teeth.



I have done that, done my role, as much as possible, and my thesis itself was a contribution to that sort of project.



But now people need to realize that history has also kicked me in the teeth. I can’t improve my social position and I have no prospect for financial improvement. This is in large part because people have given me very short thrift for being a white peson from Africa, which has during great lengths of time put an enormous strain on my mind and on my body.



Extortionists, whether of the left or right, do not stop, though, just because they have already achieved a great deal.




Dambudzo Marechera's madness and the madness of Elliot Roger

Saturday 24 May 2014

Racial Differences | Clarissa's Blog

Racial Differences | Clarissa's Blog





I’ve paid a lot of reparations over the years. Eventually one gets cynical. Even I, with my capacity to generate new emotional resources, am not a bottomless pit — and honestly I am worse of than many whom I am supposed to have oppressed, who can at least rely on the charity of their extended families in their old age, whereas I cannot.

Military 2

Thursday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog





"Technologically, humans might well reach a place where men and women are as interchangeable in combat as they are in office work but we’re not there yet."



It doesn't bother me as I am out of step and now even one might say middle-aged, so I have no stake in what present societies have already decided about gender roles.  I would care even less for anything more symbolically representative about these.



The point is, since I am one imbued with ONE of the most fundamental elements of fighting capacity (I don't assert that I have all of the elements or that I am superlative in the military mindset),  I do get to use it, informally and whenever I like.  I also seek avenues to express it more fully.



The issue of recognition does become more trivial: as time presses on the stakes are somewhat different.



I don't really care if a society relegates me to a definitively feminine role, which is what it has tried to do for the first part of my life.  But I do take pleasure in making it pay.



It's not for any reason, really, just that I have a military instinct, and I like to bring it out to play.  :)

The military mind

Thursday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog





So people TEND to be malleable, but you have to catch them at an early enough age.  Not everybody can be molded into receptivitity to certain formats, even then, but some, I presume would be more open or susceptible to it than others, depending on genetic make-up.



I actually don't see how a military state of mind could be reduced to gender.  In my view, it involves being able to take in life in much greater extremes without reacting to the provocations of what one is taking in.   If one's own reactions and emotions are not attended to directly, but one learns to accommodate them and resolve them on one's own, that is already a large way toward the development of a military mind.



I really don' t see how this fundamental feature can be reduced down to a question of masculinity or femininity.  You might think so -- but I am of the view that those gender identifications tend to occur much later in life, long after the military mind has a chance, or loses its chance, to develop.

Thursday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog

Thursday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog





It's a kind of idiocy to presume that people are, or are not suited to the military primarily on the basis of gender.  Anyone can be brought up to be suited to the military.  You just need to ignore their finer feelings, roughen them up and tell them to get on with the job.  And you need to impose this attitude on them from a VERY EARLY age, like two or three.   If you do that, they will be suited to the military, it doesn't matter what their gender is.  They may not be able to carry around heavy artillery, but their minds will be perfectly formed for obedience to war.



But modern people are very naive about what it takes and tend to essentialize things.

Thursday 22 May 2014

WORKING OFF YOUR HISTORICAL INDEBTEDNESS

WORKING OFF YOUR HISTORICAL INDEBTEDNESS from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.

Thursday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog

Thursday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog





In general, too, the more you divide the world into explanatory categories of gender, the less you can come to grips with its complexities.  For instance, one might notice a difficult person or a difficult text and then immediately resort to a platitude about gender.  For instance if and when I express the view that if people do not like something, they should take the time to ask a question and/or give a considered response, some people imply that I am only saying that because of my gender.  That is like saying that only women ask for intellectual complexity and engagement, actually, although at the level of petty minds and petty interpretations, to request anything more than one has already been given is deemed to be "whining".



So eventually it becomes even impossible to say anything intelligible to those whose primarily mode of thinking concerns gender.

Wednesday 21 May 2014

I Don’t Want to Hire Women | Clarissa's Blog

I Don’t Want to Hire Women | Clarissa's Blog



Thing is, the US education system and indeed the overall culture is so low that you would have to, as the Chinese proverb says, attempt something impossible like swallowing the ocean, if you wanted to educate all of the people. Also, it is nobody’s responsibility to educate them or to see what they have to say. If they want to build a relationship or have an intellectual discourse, that is down to them as individuals to take those steps. There’s really nothing to stop them.

Individual Freedoms vs Social Justice | Clarissa's Blog

Individual Freedoms vs Social Justice | Clarissa's Blog







The problem also seems to be that people so not have the ability to resist an impulse.  Infighting on the left is very common, just because, I think, so many cannot resist an impulse to morally upbraid someone whose views are generally very close to theirs.   Or they get a little bit back stabby, to vent some of the negative energy that accumulates when you are trying to make it in the big, bad world, with just your individuality to console you.

Your battle scars!

POLITICAL REALISM: knowing the limits of communicability

Primeval states, Wilfred Bion and social conditioning

Tuesday 20 May 2014

I Don’t Want to Hire Women | Clarissa's Blog

I Don’t Want to Hire Women | Clarissa's Blog





"There’s a simple microeconomic exercise that shows that any company that practices discrimination underperforms because it doesn’t utilize the best people availble to it."



Excellent points!  And a more general point would be that nations that underutilize the intelligence of their female members also underperform.  Furthermore those cultures and communities that make enemies of women suffer deeply from having unnecessary enemies!

Why must we assume that everyone is American?

A traumatic turn to wholeness Vs. the fragmented self

Don't fight yourself

Levels of identity and psychological projection

USSR: Standards of Living and Geography | Clarissa's Blog

USSR: Standards of Living and Geography | Clarissa's Blog



My own circumstances were not incredibly different.  All my clothes were hand downs except for a few purchased just before we left the country and school clothes and we didn't have a lot apart from the basics in terms of furniture, food and so on.  Some of the delicacies we tried toward the end of the regime and the beginning of the new were kapenta.



http://hopechildrenscenter.blogspot.com.au/2010_12_01_archive.html



and something called "samp".  It was dried, broken corn teeth which also had a lot of weevils and weevils faeces in it.  You scooped off the dead weavils with a tablespoon when the water began to boil, but they always left a slightly rancid taste in the food.



http://movemag.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/samp-and-beans.jpg

Who’s Afraid of Literature? | Clarissa's Blog

Who’s Afraid of Literature? | Clarissa's Blog

Who’s Afraid of Literature? | Clarissa's Blog

Who’s Afraid of Literature? | Clarissa's Blog





This is a greatly insightful post.  Also, not just Clarissa, but I have always thought Michael Mack was a cut above other academics in terms of understanding the interplay between psychology and politics.  Most academics are rather dull on this essential point.

Predatory systems, politics and reciprocity

Monday 19 May 2014

Further Proof Psychedelic Mushrooms Could Help Keep You Sane | Alternet

Further Proof Psychedelic Mushrooms Could Help Keep You Sane | Alternet



“When emotions are unable to be processed correctly, it can trigger mental disorders. When the amygdala responds to stimuli with intense activity, it can lead to the strengthening of negative signals and weakening the positive ones,” according to PsychCentral.com.

Philosophy lesson: on objectivity and subjectivity

Attachment to the Land | Clarissa's Blog

Attachment to the Land | Clarissa's Blog



If you knew about psychology and about what are termed "transitional objects", you would realize that there is a real sense in which the objects we were exposed to during our childhood become more emotionally fleshed out and "real".   This is not a metaphor or a complaint.  It's how we really experience things if we have forged a deep connection to certain environmental features when very young.  And we all do that to some extent, depending on our levels of imagination.

Coalition ridiculed over 'bad policies'

Coalition ridiculed over 'bad policies'





'we've got good evidence to show that yes, some people will go to the doctor that don't really need to go but a much larger number will not go to the doctor who did need to go and consequently the loss will greatly exceed the savings.'' '
Quite often I have my pharmaceutical scripts renewed by phoning my doctor's surgery, and I always cop a $7 fee for that. Am I supposed to believe the co-payment will not also apply if this cynical budget gets past the Senate ? If this happens I will walk away and let nature take it's course. I estimate that my medication will probably extend my life for about ten years if I keep taking it. It is looking as though I really don't want to be in modern Australia that long. Or society has become an utter disgrace. If we have politicians cheating their way into power, families locked up in detention and demonised for political reasons and a 'cult of the individual, dawg eat dawg ' mindset, I don't want to be here. The Liberal Party are the lowest of the low, I respect and trust bogans and ferals much more than these rats.
Commenter
adam
Location
yarrawonga
Date and time
May 20, 2014, 7:37AM


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/coalition-ridiculed-over-bad-policies-20140519-38k7y.html#ixzz32DLoF5RZ

A Portuguese Freakazoid | Clarissa's Blog

A Portuguese Freakazoid | Clarissa's Blog





Yeah, I've had the same thing addressed at me precisely, namely that if I do not always feel like I fit the feminine role, which is after all a social construct, and indeed narrower than the gender constructs I was brought up with, then I must necessarily be a "leftwing fascist".  I don't know why this is, but I suppose the masses of people get to decide what is conventional and it SEEMS very powerful to be able to say, "I won't go along with that."  But actually as someone on this site wrote to me recently, it isn't always "a choice", so one is not necessarily powerful just by pointing out that there is something that one cannot do.

Attachment to the Land | Clarissa's Blog

Attachment to the Land | Clarissa's Blog



I'm of the view that most people, especially those whose training has been under extreme capitalism, do not have any morality.  They make believe themselves to have views about stength or weakness, but what they really believe in is survival or winning, or occasionally helping people just like them.  Once one sees through the rhetoric, one finally understands.

Enough With the “Studies”! | Clarissa's Blog

Enough With the “Studies”! | Clarissa's Blog



I guess the concept embodies something totally different in Australia. Actually under the auspices of the anthropology department, we studied a whole range of situations, in lectures that went on for two hours or more. One of course comes across Structuralism and Foucault, and then lots and lots of data about modern developments like the history of criminal law and the mindsets of workers in the Philippines. It’s a mix of psychology and politics and history, with legal features and discussions about the perpetuation of tradition. So we learned that there are myths, such as about a kind of zombie in the Philippines, who has a brief case and a business suit but no line between the nose and the mouth, which means the person isn’t really a person. And the mode of striking on the job which is a form of hysteria, where underpaid workers suddenly catch a weariness disease from each other and lose control to the point they do not seem able to function. All sorts of interesting facts.

Bataille versus Fromm: the fight for individualism

Saturday 17 May 2014

How not to be affected by a chemical

I Don’t Want to Hire Women | Clarissa's Blog





"How do you choose not to be affected by a chemical?"



Maybe it would help people to realize that there are lots of different chemicals running through their bodies, not just one or two.



As to the question of how one can ever possibly resist being affected by a chemical -- I put this very question itself down to an extreme deficiency in life experience.



For instance, if one wants to stay awake later than usual, one has a cup of coffee, containing caffeine, which counteracts any chemicals telling your mind to drop off.



And there are other ways to avoid being affected by chemicals, in terms of the openings one gives them in one's mind.  For instance if one has a high intake of pornography, one will probably be more susceptible to the influx of certain hormonal compounds.



But it is generally other people, one's authorities, rather than oneself that make sure one is not always and constantly susceptible to the sway of random bodily chemicals.  For instance a corporal shouting in your face will make you much more alert in future.



One can also, for instance, switch off certain reflexive tendencies.  If I drop a cup of hot coffee on my foot, I need not storm in and abuse the boss.  Most people who keep their jobs have learned to curtail their natural tendendies somewhat.

Women Don’t Fear Power. Power Fears Women.

Women Don’t Fear Power. Power Fears Women.

All of this is great -- well-written, good insights. But let us not try to get back into gender feminism. Misogyy is not cured by treating men and women differently. I know the author is in fact arguing in the opposite direction, that the norm should be more inclusive. But there is also some conceptual slippage in terms of including female "adaptive methods" as defining of females or contemporary femininity. Rather penalize the bad or excessive behavior or men, I think, than open the door to too much adaptive weirdness by females.

 Julia Gillard represented the heights of propriety, but the men around her were (and still are) being given a pass. The results have been nothing short of comedic in fact, as Australia has just been delivered a tough budget by those who had been in opposition to her, and people are now saying, "Ah, but for some reason, I trusted those guys implicitly." They didn't present any substantive evidence of a clear-minded policy or the capacity to rule the country or understand the workings of the budget prior to being elected -- but so many people felt these rght wing men already deserved their implicit trust.

Nietzsche Vs. the dominant ideology of biologism

I Don’t Want to Hire Women | Clarissa's Blog

I Don’t Want to Hire Women | Clarissa's Blog





On a more serious note, I have come to the view that capitalism borrows from other systems of value and culture, most notably those that have gone prior, in historical formation.  Therefore it is a mechanism of consumption, not creation, which reproduces human beings who consume but cannot create (or find it very difficult to stand for anything solid or interesting).  A company may command the construction of a new product and that is often very beneficial to society, but individuals themselves are basically empty souls, whose high notes tend to be a facile sort of irony and childlike demeanor.

I Don’t Want to Hire Women | Clarissa's Blog

I Don’t Want to Hire Women | Clarissa's Blog








apollyon911 said “There is plenty of evidence. It’s simply unpalatable to most. ”



This is another Americanism. Sure, there is snot dripping down my nose and that is unpalatable news to most. But humans are not innately disgusting or born in sin, fearing the truth and having to have it forcefed to them by some God fearing man representing Absolute Reality.

I Don’t Want to Hire Women | Clarissa's Blog

I Don’t Want to Hire Women | Clarissa's Blog








It’s not that I deeply mind it, mind. It’s just that some people interpose the word “complain” when what would be more appropriate would be the words “observe” “remark, and, indeed, “question”.



Such people seem very, very binary in my view, leading me to further “observe” “remark, and, indeed, “question”..



I also realize that this level of complexity on my part COULD never become evident under the present, existing, circumstances, mind!



Oh well, never mind.

The male-man and other extraordinary fictions

The three levels of consciousness & the knowledge that pertains to each

Have a happy life!

Viral, Take 2 | Clarissa's Blog

Viral, Take 2 | Clarissa's Blog





Having tested the waters of the mainstream, they are...quintessentially middlebrow, which is to say that their views are largely informed by their emotions, without much mental processing.  If they do not immediately understand what you are saying, in terms of their own cultural context, they will view your writing as not being very good, or not as good as it might be, if only you had put in more effort and been as smart as they.  The members of the mainstream simply do not fathom that there is anything beyond or above the mainstream.  So if you want to catch their eye, you need to trip an emotional switch or two.  Gender controversies seem to do that, because they call forth a sense of crude competitiveness in relation to gender hierarchies.  But unless you are lucky, you will not get a deep, considered, or complex response.   Put simply, people are responding to their own mentalizations and not to the content of the text -- indeed, the more complex the text is, the more this rule applies.

The shamanic type's absorption of EVIL

"Blood debt"

Baffling Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Set for Diagnostic Overhaul - Scientific American

Baffling Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Set for Diagnostic Overhaul - Scientific American

Friday 16 May 2014

I Don’t Want to Hire Women | Clarissa's Blog

I Don’t Want to Hire Women | Clarissa's Blog





“Americas cultural diseases are many and endemic princess syndrome is one of them. I’m sure there are male equivalents…bro culture?”
Right. This is what I was thinking, too. So much of the thread is not very intelligible to me because these are specifically American cultural issues. It’s not that Australia has not become to some degree Americanized, but whenever I hear “women are emotional” or “women are sensitive” I have to try to put myself into the mind of a fundamentalist Christian and see the world from the point of view where each gender represents a partial person. Perhaps women are half a person and men are three-quarters of a person. That’s the only way any of this makes sense.

Smith College’s Battle Against Patriarchy | Clarissa's Blog

Smith College’s Battle Against Patriarchy | Clarissa's Blog





It's weird because our hard right wing government is currently seeking to introduce some draconian measures against the weak of society and there are leftists arguing that the opposition party supporters should not be permitted to attend the protest rally.

Thursday 15 May 2014

Feminism = Triviality? | Clarissa's Blog

Feminism = Triviality? | Clarissa's Blog



When I was a kid I developed a macho ethic.  I had seen a documentary about a woman who had trekked across the Australian outback with only a camel train to support her, and I -- being  born in Africa -- wanted to be in a position to be able to flee to the bush and be self-reliant if something untoward happened to me, like terrorists approached or another danger closed in.



Already I was inclined to explore the roads and landscape in bare feet, much of the time, but I decided to step up the toughness quotient to another level by deliberately walking on rugged rocks and stones so as to harden the soles of my feet.



White kids already had rather hardened foot soles, with cracked heels being the norm, but nothing like their black counterparts' feet, which tended to have layers and layers of dead skin.



I wanted to be the toughest, because anything less than the capacity to be one hundred percent mobile at a moments' notice was a slight against my character, at least in my own mind.   I hated the notion of myself as stuck in one place and dependent on the items of civilisation.

I Don’t Want to Hire Women | Clarissa's Blog

I Don’t Want to Hire Women | Clarissa's Blog



They don’t want to look within to the extent of doing any hard work on their own characters. So they embrace a silly notion that character structure is immutable. That enables them to continue to blame “the system” and various others for their failures.

I Don’t Want to Hire Women | Clarissa's Blog

I Don’t Want to Hire Women | Clarissa's Blog


Probably linked to the difference between being and doing, and once again to the gender roles where women, being the ornamental sex, are identified with unchangeable BEING and men are considered creatures who DO. Being, of course, is not easy to alter, and especially if it is all one has one may be reluctant to try to change it, whereas, one can always change the ways one DOES something. So, traditionally-minded women get all upset about criticism and traditionally-minded men see it as instructive or helpful.

Wednesday 14 May 2014

clown ninja


I Don’t Want to Hire Women | Clarissa's Blog

I Don’t Want to Hire Women | Clarissa's Blog



The whole issue that people are discussing upthread seems to relate to women being somehow positioned as those who are gazed upon, rather than as acting in their own rights. Well that relates to women being aesthetic entities, whereas men are action entities. If those ideas are internalized a great deal, you end up with random women wondering what the invisible observers might be thinking about them. Get into an action mindset and you do not care. But to what extent does any particular culture allow these extremely conventional and rather rotten roles to be altered?

Cats!

Monday 12 May 2014

The normalization of weakened states (repost)

Our early cultural experiences count for something right until we die. Sometimes we get our sense of normality from them and sometimes we rebel. I think I’m very different from my sister, who tends to lean toward community and feel defined by it. My character has always been structured in an asocial way — in a sense of wanting to sniff the air and catch its vibe, like a dog with its head out the window of a car going as fast as possible.
My migratory shift from an exciting situation of war and freedom to one where citizens were genuinely law-abiding was the worst experience of my life. To me, the move from Zimbabwe to Australia was from an adult state to an infantilized one, where nobody actually trusted themselves to make their own decisions, but instead looked to the law to tell them what to do. I’m sure much of the problem was private property. You couldn’t camp just anywhere you wanted to. You couldn’t build a fire and be trusted to put it out again afterwards. You weren’t allowed to do a great deal. Also, the TV news was extremely dumbed-down compared to the very serious news we had been used to experiencing, which concerned war and death and stoicism in the face of enemy hostility. Instead, we learned that somebody’s dog had gone missing, but had been returned.
The spirit of lawlessness still prevails in Zimbabwe, thankfully. One takes the responsibility for dealing with one’s own safety and is entirely responsible if the outcome isn’t what you’d hoped for. One would never blame others if a project one had set out to complete hadn’t worked out. In Australia, they do, though. It’s second nature. “If I obey the laws that are in place to protect me, society has to make sure everything goes according to my plans, otherwise heads will roll! (I will find someone to blame).”
I find this more civilized Australian attitude to be incomprehensible. It seems to imply the desire for a social contract based on blind trust.

The “Aggrieved Kids Write” Genre | Clarissa's Blog

The “Aggrieved Kids Write” Genre | Clarissa's Blog



If you inherit two generations of fairly extreme war trauma, unmitigated by any social security system or other social niceties, are you "privileged"?  Situationally, I'm sure I was privileged, there probably isn't any doubt about it.  But psychologically, I was never in anything but an extremely dire state, especially after about the age of 12, when our historical circumstances took a turn for the worse.   So I had to bring MYSELF up, effectively, whilst defending against a raging parent and a world raging against the perceived or actual excesses of my former nation.  And on top of all of this, people kept saying it was a gender thing, that all these hidden circumstances were related to my condition of being female, which they hinted was a relatively deficient state.

But outwardly, I am the QUINTESSENTIALLY privileged person, because I seem to have been born in circumstances that most people would not have been able to have experienced.

I find the whole talk and assumption-making about what is or isn't privileged to be entirely deficient on the basis of my experiences.   Of course, if one's calculations are based on something more solid that a few, scant facts, one might get closer to a very, very, schematic picture of broad-based privilege -- who has it and who doesn't.

But failing the ability to generate such a wonderful way of reading and understanding everyone in the word effortlessly, one may have to actually talk to people.

Sunday 11 May 2014

THE GAME WAS LOST

The game was lost and it was always lost under bourgeois notions of liberalism.  For once, women were demoted from their aristocratic place.  Sure, some women got to be in the ascendency.  They were promoted to the level of at least being abstractly equal, even if the practical dimensions of equality were undermined by the notion that only men were truly rational and that women, embodying the human dimension of being the split-in-half side, were only ever rampantly emotional.    And then there was the idea that you shouldn't fight, as that demotes you to the rampantly emotional level.   Then bourgeois society exerted its final blow to aristocratic sensibilities by making-it-so that children at least could represent an all-encompassing innocence, which grown adults had to grovel to.

So that's what happened.  The idea of disgust gravitated away from being disgusted with those who would not stand up for themselves and their friends.  It wandered off and soiled itself.  It pooed its brookies.

Then we all stood by and cheered and proclaimed the wonderful innocence of it all.

I've had people call me, on the phone, with shit on their faces, to say they would not stand up for me when "a customer" (who knows what customer, nobody I know, nobody anybody knows deeply or in any intimate way) "complained" about something vague that had crawled up their buttocks.   I've had people I've "known" for years shake their heads gravely and proclaim their inability to help when I have asked them to at least give me some MORAL support when patriarchy was beating down.  They've told me, very, very gravely indeed, that there is nothing anyone can do about it.  It's just he way life is.  Sometimes life hands out to us our beatings.

Still others have smeared shit on the faces to tell me (after a tremendous number of years) that really, after all, they cannot understand my point of view.  Perhaps they think I am a little infant. So they will rub gorgeous, slimy and grotesque shit into their eyes to prove it.

So the game, was lost, and I being a Rhodesian infant, always knew it, in the basement of my spine.

Of course I can SEE there is grandeur in allowing the tall cream cake to fall from your hands, in allowing the ice-cream to topple from its crispy wafer, if only it is to prove to others, "Your posse is no longer here to save you -- so suck on that super idea of your crispy wafer ice-cream and the nicely decorated cake you had been promised.  Also suck on the shit that's all over my face.  Enjoy the delicious grandeur of it.  I might not be able to put anything up, but I can sure bring something DOWN."




unsustainable spending in Australia is a myth

The corrective to flatness and vacuity

The corrective to Nietzsche‘s self-sacrifice via elitism or “transcendence” is of course Georges Bataille, who is clearly of the left and addresses the problems of modernity as a closer contemporary to you or I.
The problem of bourgeois society IS the reification of the ego — that is, the assumption that a concept of oneself defines one’s actual identity I think that liberals in general cannot understand a critique from someone of my bent, who takes up the Nietzschean tradition. They imagine that it would be impossible not to reify the ego or to avoid doing so would mean to denigrate (perhaps even to disintegrate) the ego. This is typical bourgeois black or white thinking.
One cannot develop actual subjectivity unless one sacrifices the aggrandizement of the bourgeois ego.  Yet the (only apparent rather than actual) sacrifice does not lead to nothing or negation, although that is the danger and the threat that Bataille’s writing announces.

Levels of identity and psychological projection

Repost

QUESTION:

What I’m looking for is a way to get people to stop with the knee-jerk lizard brain response. I’m thinking that one might fire with fire, as oftentimes merely pointing out someone’s irrational pattern is not enough to stop it.

You are obviously very bright, and probably could think of something that would be effective.

Oh! Do you think it’s a matter of people won’t stop until they themselves possess the desire to stop?


ANSWER:

It’s a bit like asking a martial artist, “I have a bit of a problem on the street corner. Would you be able to give me some clues about how to defend myself?” Really, nobody can give you clues so much as you have to do the training.

Fighting fire with fire is something I have tried, and it is a mistake. It only makes everything worse.

The key is in the ability not to respond. But it is not a passive non-response, either. It’s actually something you have to be trained for. Really you have to simply discern what is the lizard brain in the other person’s response. Bear in mind that this aspect is irrational, and not subject to reason. For instance, it is not able to use the logic, “if I keep doing what I’m doing to the other person, they will keep doing it to me, so I’d better stop.”

Also, it is very unlikely that someone will have the desire to stop, since it is very pleasurable for people to behave in a very primal way. People who habitually behave in this way can be counted on to never stop.

The thing is to realise that lizard brain and its behaviour is a fire (your metaphor is apt). So if you see that someone has caught fire, the best thing to do is to protect yourself from it. Realise that their behaviour may seem innane or silly or simply contemptible from the point of view of the higher mind — but to trivialise their behaviour in any way is about the most dangerous thing you can do. Somebody behaving in this way is extremely dangerous, and what seems trivial or silly about their behaviour could lead you to underestimate their power. You will get burnt.

Higher mind is generally defenceless against the lizard brain, actually. That is the first thing to realise — since the lizard brain is not susceptible to logic.

There is one thing it can do, and maybe only one tactic that I have learned, in order to defend oneself. One must not allow the lizard brain of another person to have anything to say. One must realise that the content of what it says is in fact irrelevant to its goals, which are to upset you and win by making you lose your poise.

So, don’t pay attention to the content of the criticisms that are directed towards you. Rather, make the person work hard to try to explain what they are saying in more rational terms.

The minute you put pressure on lizard brain to speak rationally, the lizard brain person will thump out a few more hysterical criticisms and depart. You have challenged them to do something that they cannot do.

HOW DOES SHAMANISM RELATE TO ALL THIS?

Shamanism is interested in observing and handling the regressive part of the personality (ie. that part which is not entirely integrally linked to the whole, but is actually a complex device facilitating survival in terms of a mode of ‘thinking’ entirely different from the rest of consciousness). I think this regressive part of the personality is R-Complex. I think that most people are unwittingly controlled by R-Complex to some degree. (This is the part of the Unconscious that deals with power relations, and issues of authority in relation to survival.) The fundamental goal of shamanism is to make one aware of R-complex. One way of looking at this is that shamanism involves a mental decoupling of the higher mind from R-Complex, so that one may better observe R-Complex at work. One may then see how in some cases it may act as a healing mechanism — (for instance, see Sherry Salman’s Jungian work). Generally, however, becoming aware of R-Complex can enable one to better combat it in others.

WHY DO LIZARD BRAIN ORIENTED PEOPLE LACK EMPATHY?

One of the reasons why it is difficult to empathise with another is that it requires a certain level of sophistication, which has been sacrificed by lizard brain types, who are oriented towards the world on the basis of survival. Really, one has to see the other being as a person to be able to empathise with them. But those oriented towards the world on the basis of power do not perceive other persons as such. They perceive only “interests” in relation to power, but they do not perceive the complex colours and textures that make up a personality. Their whole orientation towards the world is based on a philosophy that we must “struggle to survive” — and so they rely upon lizard brain, which is most adept at “surviving” in an amoral sense. There is a whole internal logic to lizard brain’s way of viewing the world that is extremely faciliative of survival, especially since it hugely simplifies the personality, and does away with the question of ethics as being too burdensome to facilitate survival. Those who experience the world predominatly in this way, in any case, will not be attuned to seeing others as ‘persons’.

Cultural barriers to objectivity