Paradoxically, destructive people may be really your best friends, but only if you are strong enough. A strong sparring partner can reveal to you the holes in your defence and where you need to improve your game.
Or if you are not so strong, they are your worst enemies. And in some respects, since we are strong and weak, they can demolish our weaker sides so that they can be caused to regenerate in part, although perhaps never entirely. I say this as a non-mystic, who sees that shamanism certainly has a structure -- as I have noticed in the writings of Nietzsche, Bataille and Marechera -- but who does not believe in individual destinies. It isn't that we were supposed, as such, to be destroyed, because we were supposed, as such, to learn a lesson. Rather, that was what occurred due to any sorts of reasons, for reasons that may have been overdetermined (i.e. there were more than one).
Look at it this way. It's not just that we are pushed into molds by negative authoritarian forces, but that our impression of the sheer awesomeness of certain notions,objects or types of people, also leaves its impression on our minds. Positive control may be more effective and more devastating than negative control, in fact, as it is less obvious.
And destructive people break spells. If you are spellbound by the idea that powerful people are automatically superior people, a destructive powerful person will teach you otherwise. That is, if you are open to the lesson, an important lesson can be learned. There may still be an impediment when people are spellbound severely by a negative authoritarian structure -- that is to say, they are afraid to act, even on what they know. Not everybody learns a lesson when realistic facts are demonstrated but some do.
If in childhood we come under all sorts of spells, adulthood is high time to disabuse ourselves of these. When a narcissist attacks or a troll attacks, we unlearn how to be spellbound by the values they purport to stand for. To the extent the left has attacked me, I have learned to distrust the left and to the extent the right has attacked me, I have learned to distrust it as well.
After a while, destructive people have no other effect on me than revelatory truth. They show me my blind spots, where I am still unconsciously revering something that ought not to have my reverence. I only got this way because as a child I was spellbound.
As Nietzsche says, "The more mistrust, the more philosophy is present."
Or if you are not so strong, they are your worst enemies. And in some respects, since we are strong and weak, they can demolish our weaker sides so that they can be caused to regenerate in part, although perhaps never entirely. I say this as a non-mystic, who sees that shamanism certainly has a structure -- as I have noticed in the writings of Nietzsche, Bataille and Marechera -- but who does not believe in individual destinies. It isn't that we were supposed, as such, to be destroyed, because we were supposed, as such, to learn a lesson. Rather, that was what occurred due to any sorts of reasons, for reasons that may have been overdetermined (i.e. there were more than one).
Look at it this way. It's not just that we are pushed into molds by negative authoritarian forces, but that our impression of the sheer awesomeness of certain notions,objects or types of people, also leaves its impression on our minds. Positive control may be more effective and more devastating than negative control, in fact, as it is less obvious.
And destructive people break spells. If you are spellbound by the idea that powerful people are automatically superior people, a destructive powerful person will teach you otherwise. That is, if you are open to the lesson, an important lesson can be learned. There may still be an impediment when people are spellbound severely by a negative authoritarian structure -- that is to say, they are afraid to act, even on what they know. Not everybody learns a lesson when realistic facts are demonstrated but some do.
If in childhood we come under all sorts of spells, adulthood is high time to disabuse ourselves of these. When a narcissist attacks or a troll attacks, we unlearn how to be spellbound by the values they purport to stand for. To the extent the left has attacked me, I have learned to distrust the left and to the extent the right has attacked me, I have learned to distrust it as well.
After a while, destructive people have no other effect on me than revelatory truth. They show me my blind spots, where I am still unconsciously revering something that ought not to have my reverence. I only got this way because as a child I was spellbound.
As Nietzsche says, "The more mistrust, the more philosophy is present."
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