Georges Bataille, in opposition to the real fascists

Georges Bataille, in opposition to the real fascists from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.

Lessons on the economy

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/30/unemployed-and-applying-for-40-jobs-a-month-if-you-didnt-laugh-youd-cry

Georges Bataille, in opposition to the real fascists

Georges Bataille, in opposition to the real fascists from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.

Rhodesian Forces in combat against freedom fighters

The absurdity of confusing focus on duty with failed self-interest

self portraits 2014

Bataille, fascism, intellectuals....

"Value, Price and Profit" a speech Karl Marx gave in 1865, read by Mike ...

"Value, Price and Profit" a speech Karl Marx gave in 1865, read by Mike ...

Bataille, fascism, intellectuals....

incompleteness/soul loss

I think one of the most terrifying things is to have other people demand things of you, or even get punitive, when you are in a mode of incompleteness.

 

When I first migrated to Australia, I was in a mode of real incompleteness and psychological shock.  As we know, that continued for some time.

 

But I also had a lot of hidden pressures.  My first pressure was simply to adapt to my new external circumstances.  But, as well as this, I had parents who began to lean on me as the eldest – not just a bit, but quite heavily.   I had to be the bridge for their adjustments.  But at the same time they insisted we are proud people who will not adjust our values or behavior or language to conform to the new norms.

 

Add onto this my father’s raw mental state and barely contained vengefulness, as he became angry at having to readjust midlife.  He had fully believed the ideology of the Rhodesian rulers about maintaining a standard for Western civilization based on Christianity – one that would have been superlatively good, in a society that was assured survival BECAUSE of its reliance on God despite monumental political and psychological pressures.   So when that was shown, by circumstances, to be false, he was profoundly rocked to the core of his being as well as subconsciously – but never openly – outraged at the betrayal, which had taken on metaphysical proportions by now.

 

So I had to cope with his extreme levels of aggression at me, and displacement of the blame for Rhodesia’s demise, onto me.   Nothing I did was ever perfect or good enough.   And because I had to constantly use a lot of energy to defend myself from his ventures into my personal space (both literally and figuratively),  I had difficulty recovering my own equilibrium and felt rather raw myself.

 

Along with this, others also never really let me adjust.   They kept telling me things I could not make sense of, implying that my life has been easy or “privileged” and that now I would have to pay.  

 

But my life in the past and even in the present was rather precarious.   In the present it was more so, since I had become emotionally blocked from experiencing my own sensations, since people kept implying that I ought to feel guilty about who I was.

 

So I became this de-sensationalized person.  And then people put on more pressure:  “You need to adjust.  You need to adjust!” – but I had lost my sensations.

 

This is, I think, “soul loss”:  one loses one’s capacities to function and one’s emotions make one frightened.  One feels that there is something socially unacceptable about having emotions of any sort at all – and one tries to constrain them.

 

But these blocked off aspects then become unknown aspects of the self and represent a puzzle and a source of danger.   One has to try to draw them out slowly, but that has NOW become a psychologically  transgressive motion and fraught with danger.  One is drawing out emotions that others have described a socially unacceptable.  

 

This process is terrifying, too. 

 

And then there are the secondary effects of all of this – people noticing your incompleteness and commenting on it.  That adds another layer of psychological difficulty and mental confusion.

 

So, to function when you are incomplete is very difficult.

 

I actually think it is almost unbelievable that I made it out the other side, into completeness, finally.   Given my circumstances, you would not think I would.  But here I am!

Dignity

As for dignity, I do think it is the freedom to carry oneself upright, to the full length of one’s being.  To have to bow down, to be hunched over, to have people address themselves as if to someone half your height, or to your body rather than your mind, is undignified.

 

Also—I think it is a very fruitful area to look into WHAT IT TAKES to see oneself from the outside and WHY this is important.  I think it is important because one needs to know what one’s actual range is, and where others may mislead you about your range or make you take on a false sense of identity to serve their purposes. 

 

It seems to me that in the second leg of my shamanic journey (after the frightening initiatory experience), I tried to learn what others thought of me, but more importantly how valid or invalid those assessments really were.   It might seem self-obsessed to embark on a journey to find out what others think of you, and indeed it is, but I could not gain a deeper sense of reality unless I knew what was true and what was false about their perceptions.   (I could have taken on the identity that had been bestowed on me, but that felt like misshapen clothes and shoes that didn’t even fit.)  

 

So, one must do something very dangerous which is to solicit for other people’s opinions, in an often hostile context, when one doesn’t want to “wear” their opinions at all, but find out what they are in order to know what is true or false about society’s appraisals of oneself.  Once one has enough information from the outside, one can close the circle and not take in any more data.  But until then, one has to be open and try to process the data that may not make much direct sense. 

 

And all of this is just to reclaim one’s dignity by being aware of false projections (false attire) and being able to dress only as one chooses.

DUTY is different from ENTHUSIASM and takes a different channel

There is a similarity between “calls” and “callings”, because not everybody can speak to everyone.  So it is important to know who you can speak to and who you cannot.  If you do not have a deep urge inside of you to communicate with certain types of people, I think that it is worse than counterproductive to try to do so.

 

That is why it is very important to learn who one is.  Now I tried to make a video yesterday, but it was very noisy (Mike was playing music very loudly) and I was trying to think and couldn’t capture my ideas effectively enough, except as a draft.   Also I was extremely tired yesterday (and still a bit today).   But what I wanted to say (and what I will do better, once I get the energy) is that I am now much more aware that the kind of person I am is not very interesting in infecting people who are motived primarily by excitement with greater enthusiasm.   I’m very negative in that department.   I understand the principles – but I am a worse than bad communicator if I try to come across as all energetic and enthused about some new fad.  That is because my basic character is oriented toward duty, (which can be enjoyable too – and kind of Apollonian in your sense).  But I’m not this frenzied kind of energetic communicator.  So I don’t have CALLING to communicate with such people who expect that and I actually (more tellingly) cannot make the CALLS they recognize or come to expect.  If I try, I make a false noise – and then people say I am trying to endear myself by being false.  Which isn’t at all true.  I was complying with external expectations in the line of duty, and just lacked motivation and capacity.

 

So I’m better if I rest on my own weight, even if that is sometimes lacking in some ways.  My own weight is to be circumspect about the calls of duty.   I CAN be expansive within the range that this principle allows.   But I am not – you know – like the aerobics instructor, or the faddish person that writes a bestseller like “Eat, Pray, Love”.  I don’t have that in me.  Like you, I am more of a theoretician than an actor or performer.  I’m also, in a deep way, a scientist, because I like to observe reactions and then tweak them, often from a relatively safe distance.

 

So, anyway, the video was supposed to be about my calling, and I will have to make it again, when I am not so tired.

GUT

Ordinary being

Think of what it would be like if you had to be a spirit outside of your body, for a period of time.  Everything you experienced was kind of airless and foodless and insubstantial.  Around you is a field of abstract words and abstract actions and harsh historical forces clashing against other even more violent forces, to the point that you wonder how anything human could even be permitted to survive for very long, if at all.

 

And then suddenly, with a rush, you are in your body.  You can live and breathe and eat food and have forays and exist within a self, with vision and hearing and tactile sensations.

 

Suddenly, just having a being seems like the most miraculous thing in the world.   It’s not that you think you are a perfect being all of a sudden or that you do everything right.  But you are so surprised by your capacity just to BE within the mode of being that everything seems worthy of remark and reverence.

 

Well, this is the shamanic discovery of ORDINARINESS as a high point of existence!

Shamanic genius

The way I see it is that there is a kind of natural genius, which is raw power to take in information, to hold it in and to apply it in some way.   That kind of genius may produce very beautiful artifacts, but it is not shamanic.   Shamanic genius is the capacity to transition between different levels of the consciousness, from high to medium to low and back again.   My theory is that the normal state of the psyche is not to want to transition, but to stay in the same place.  Supposing I am a genius, then I want to produce beautiful books presenting my insights and to make myself pleasant to the public and endear myself to them.  That is the drive of ordinary genius.   Ordinary genius always floats upward and upward and upward.  

 

Supposing Marechera was an ordinary genius?  He studied a wide range of classical texts – Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, ancient Roman and Greek literature, the Romantic poets....

 

I imagine he could have written in the same kind of classical tradition.  This kind of literature delights and it appeals to the higher sensibilities in humanity and to its ruling element.  But as beautiful as it is, this is not the kind of literature that reveals the roots of a society to itself and enables it to heal.

 

For genius to become shamanic, it has to be compelled to plumb the depths as well as reaching for the heights.   Otherwise the depths of the society cannot be known and people cannot heal.

 

I noticed this as the distinct difference between Marechera’s writing and that of other Shona writers, for instance Chenjerai Hove.  Hove wrote more in the way of political realism, lauding the struggles of the peasants.   If I were a peasant I would feel elevated by his writing, and perhaps delighted and reassured.  But I would not understand myself better, arguably, and above all I would not understand the real nature of the pathology afflicting my country.  I would not understand its roots.  it is too facile to say that its roots were “racism” and that the enemy was “colonialism”.   That kind of thinking only gets you the repressive tactics of the Mugabe regime.   It’s just too trite.  The writing may be elevating, but it is not diagnostic.

 

By contrast, Marechera’s writing is not always elevating, but it is always diagnostic.   Why?  Because he was wounded to the soul himself – and his wounding was complex.   It never was, for Marechera, just a simple issue of blacks versus whites and who should dominate.  Therefore he had to resolve the issue of his own wounding in a way that harnessed all his intellectual and artistic skills.   And if we can SEE what he is pointing to in his writing, we can actually free ourselves as well.  But those who do not want to admit that they are spiritually ill, because the events in the country’s history have made them so, will keep demanding something elevating and reassuring.  They don’t want to get to the bottom of themselves as that is difficult and painful.  And Marechera, too, probably didn’t want to get to the bottom of himself, but he had been constrained to.

 

So the shaman type is bound to the historical pathology by necessity – and, because he is a genius, finds a way to free himself, that can in turn be used by others.  Those who do not understand the complex and necessary nature of this vocation always urge that one hurries along and gets going into the future and embraces whatever one finds there.   But that is to urge the embrace of superficiality and movement for the sake of movement.  

 

It therefore seems to me that there are geniuses – but there are also constrained geniuses, whose subjective well being has been harnessed and made totally dependent on whether or not they can free themselves from a historically engendered affliction on their psyches.   They have to free themselves or else they remain pinned in a pathological state, which is distressing.  So they find new means to freedom and new insights to resolve the difficulty they are in.

 

Or failing that, they die trying.

The Traceless Warrior: Slicing Time

The Traceless Warrior: Slicing Time

The iniate as achieved concordance

I think we tend to err, as a society, and indeed in the humanities, when we view the fundamental relationships of life as being inter-personal.  It’s just a wrong paradigm.

 

The fundamental relationship in life, that has to be right above all, is the intra-personal one. 

 

Think about what a paradigm that centralizes the inter-personal demands.  You have to calibrate yourself with others.  But the only way to do this is either to be in a mode of complete acquiescence with others (a mode of complete conformity) or to keep changing one’s calibration, from one situation to the next (which is to continue to foot the bill, in every instance, for one’s differences).  The inter-personal paradigm, therefore favors conformity as the least energy consuming adaptation.  If you do not learn it early, eventually you will be worn down to the point of accepting conformity as the way to reduce ongoing expenditure over time.

 

By contrast there is the model of the intra-personal.  The assumption that this is a retreat or an easy resort can be only made by those who have not tried it.  It is actually the most difficult option in the sense of calibrating oneself to oneself.  Naïve people would suggest this relation is a mode of narcissism, but that is because they haven’t tried it.  They don’t know that there is a doing self and an observing self and that the observing self is often harshly critical of the doing self.  So it is very difficult to be alone with oneself and listen to the antagonism or the reprimands.  It does take a lot of energy and will and a determination to reach a calibration.

 

Actually, I think that is what shamanic initiation is about – getting the right calibration with oneself, so that no matter what might happen on the outside, or to the world in general, this fundamental calibration is right.

Destabilizing writing

I think you need very steady nerves when navigating the second dimension, because it is intrinsically destabilizing and THEREFORE makes us feel paranoid.  That is why it is so hard to fix it in the eye, like a raven, and talk about it.  If we encounter it in another we are most likely to feel uncanny and a sense of paranoia.  Some individuals do EMBODY those second dimensional qualities, though.  Like Marechera.  If you read him as speaking about social events or realities, as many have done, you would get frustrated with him that he does not seem to address “real” issues in a pragmatic manner.  In fact, he is seeing more than just those everyday and obvious  issues.  He’s got his eye fixed on something else as well, which is that intrinsically destabilizing “outside” level of existence.  And that is why if you are not habituated to taking in this mode as part of reality and processing it as another dimension of your experience, you will find the writing a destabilizing experience.  Or, more likely, you will switch off and let your mind start wandering, which is to allow your mind a way of refusing to encounter material that it finds very disturbing and hard to digest.   (It seems that we tend to recognize as meaningful only that which we are habituated to recognizing at all, while we relegate everything not yet familiar to the realm of non-existence.)  

Response: MH17, the abyss and non-being

Personally, I think that once one becomes more attuned to EXPECTING any slippage OUT of centrism or (to use my term, out of the insistence on “being” and into the recognition of the presence, as it were of “nonbeing”) one finds the kind of writing or gestures that always insist on  the presence of “Being” (or, to use your terms somewhat, the dialectic of satisfaction and non-satisfaction) to be lacking in some fundamental capacity for recognition .    For instance, I just read an article about the MH17, which is supposed to evoke our sense of drama.  The relatives said goodbye to their smiling relatives at the airport and now what remains of these travelers are just broken body parts, hardly recognizable as the people to whom they’d said farewell.  But this writing does not really evoke a sense of horror, because people insist on remaining at the level of “Being” with regard to all of this, when what is really horrific is the turning of Being into Nonbeing.   If a journalist were able to portray the transition of Being into Nonbeing, THAT would truly be horrifying.   It would also more accurately depict what has occurred.  But journalists (and most people) write in very centrist prose.

And there is also a reason for this ACTUALLY VERY SAFE LANGUAGE of centrist prose, because it is very reassuring even in the midst of death, since such language cannot really acknowledge death or come to terms with it.  It is, after all, necessarily centrist – DENOTING THE LANGUAGE OF BEING, even when the words themselves STRIVE VAINLY  to connote the opposite.  So you end up with newspaper headlines with all the pictures of the passengers saying, “BRING THEM HOME”.   That is also centrist (conventional) logic – which is the logic of presence, even in circumstances of its MANIFEST OPPOSITE (death, non-presence, non-being).

---

Language, it seems always leads us to speak in terms of an illusionary presence.  So much is this so that in THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOGIC there was a huge debate among logical positivists about whether language is misleading inherently, since one can make the assertion “Pegasus does not exist”, but the use of the label, “Pegasus”, already denotes existence.   Similarly, the word “dead relatives, as a result of terrorists” also evokes the notion of their existence --- and so some people remain transfixed, if not completely, at least in part.

-----

I think that a useful way to look at the problem (although this way also can be misused, lending itself to the naïve and mystical formulations you have been critiquing),  is in terms of the solidifications of meanings that becoming linguistic conventionalism.  And what is language itself, other than a solidification of conventional terms and (even) relationships?  We have (to take a trivial example), “man VERSUS woman”.   We have “cats” – but all “cats”, having been labeled as such,  now seem somehow are the same, unless we look at them more carefully and with a discerning eye.  But language itself compels us to put them in the same bracket, hence one “cat” seems interchangeable with another, even if we already KNOW on some other levels of knowledge, that this is not so.   When the hypnotic spell of language is broken, however, we start to see the variations and the unpredictability and are suddenly in the second dimension of experiencing.

And I think what you are also saying, if I put it in my own words, is that the ascetic tries to enter the second dimension by denying himself satisfaction ON PRINCIPLE, but that this leads to a false light as the dialectic he creates for himself is itself false or illusionary.  You can’t enlighten yourself “on principle”, because you can’t really force the issue of enlightenment.  It’s much more organic than that.

That said, we can’t avoid using language, or even (because of the way our brains function) evoking the metaphysics of presence.   The whole obsession that some people have with their IDENTITIES expresses a desire to stabilize themselves in reality through the use of language.  It’s really very narrow, because I cannot express to you or others who I am by using language.  Unless I were a very conventional person myself and allowed language to pin me down and constrain my VERY BEHAVIOR, any strong labeling of myself would be misleading.

-----

But “non-presence” and “non-being” – isn’t that what Poe’s Raven was trying to communicate to us?  And maybe dogs also sense it, but I think the ravens do as well.  I was in the park one day and one flew very low, flapping sullenly on a horizontal path, and fixed me with its steely eye.

The shamanic type and "the abyss"

The Chinese

inner resources

Even when left alone, it wasn't so much left alone as I kept this attachment. It's what I mean by not being allowed to grow up. 

I see.  I guess in a way I had the opposite experience as in the feeling that there ought to be a sky above me (a firm enough system of authority) that guarantees people will behave in a trustworthy manner, or else I will fall apart.  In your case, your concern may be a lack of ongoing, reassuring nurturing.

In my case, a lot of things I tried to do were sabotaged -- either by history, or by individuals or by groups of people.  So, Now I don't really trust that if I lean against a situation and make it accept my whole weight, the floor will not open up so that I fall through it.  I've had that experience often enough.

I wonder if in your case, you are not just waiting for the nurturing mother, but also waiting for her to betray you, by taking up your space and making it all about her.  Betrayal on this level might seem warm and nurturing, but is she was taking up the space you needed for your adult self, that was not good at all.  Maybe if many of your inner resources were not directed to your mother, you would have been able to use those resources on yourself.

COMBATIVENESS, AIMED AT DIMINISHMENT: Palestine, MH17, Hunyani & Umniati

"Not doing" as a "feminine" modality

The cause of initiatory madness

Well the way I was thinking about it is that when one experiences temporary madness, that is as a result of the poor engineering of one's psyche.  This can be as a result of the action of political forces, or familial forces and/or even temperamental propensities counterpoised against the prevailing political, historical and social realities.  So the psyche is likely to vomit itself up, as it were, and then there is a chance to start over, using the raw materials that have in some sense become more malleable and less resistant than before.

This was my original notion.  But now I think that any guarantee of a safe return is influenced primarily by whether or not one's very early childhood was happy, or perhaps inhibited in some way.  I think one's very early childhood forms the foundation to start again, but if that was itself unhappy, the outcomes probably will not be as good.

In Marechera's case, he did have a very happy few early years and really felt attuned to nature.  In effect, then, one can lean on the memory of these early years, and this helps to rebuild.  But if one cannot lean on those, because those memories themselves do not allow oneself to reflect on oneself as a WHOLE being, then that is obviously problematic.

I guess in that case there are holes in the matrix all the way through.  But the goal of shamanism is still to try to reconstitute the self as a whole.   Only, I don't think a regressive mode will work in that case. 

Perhaps, at least in theory, what one needs to do instead is to find out what is missing from one's being that makes it less than whole.  For a Rhodesian white woman, such as myself, we missed the visceral aspects of bodily experience, I mean access to raw emotional states.   So I also had to go looking for these sorts of memories and experiences (even if I hadn't originally had them) and add them on to my base of self-knowledge.  This has been done and I have done it by correcting the historical error and adding them on retrospectively.  When I did this successfully, I cured myself of an immune system deficiency (literally -- I used to catch every 'flu and cold).

But it is hard to know what is missing in each individual's particular being, so that one can close off the hole to the matrix.

I think Marechera's writing CAN be instructive, if you immerse yourself in it, because he really was a completely WHOLE person who found all the missing parts of himself and got them to work together.  So by reading his writing, but through full immersion, you can get a sense of which parts of yourself are still switched off and try to bring them into full functioning.  I, myself, had to read BLACK SUNLIGHT about 50 times to break down my resistance to raw, visceral experiences.  But once I had done that, I experienced for the first time the raw sensations of a more delicate form of life.  This was healing for me, because I realized I could access more of life's sensations without being in an automatically defensive mode against them.

But everybody will be different.  And it does take some work!

What is full shamanic immersion?

I think there are two issues raised here.  One is our tendency to switch off and not acknowledge what is happening when we feel overwhelmed by something that previously impacted on us as a strange and potentially hostile experience.  The other issue is the possibility or even likelihood of becoming retraumatised or perhaps traumatised in a different way, though bumping into the barriers that prevent you from having a more fluid experience of the kinds of events you fear.

I think both of these are realistic fears, and this is probably why "do it yourself shamanism" is a riskier prospect in some ways than if you really had someone to help you who knows very deeply what they are doing.

I don't know what more to say about those issues at the moment, except that the fears you have a realistic, but that there may be more to gain by trying to shamanize yourself, as I managed to do, I think, even though you may end up with other inadvertent wounds, in the process.  I think I did feel more vulnerable during the process of absorbing more of what Marechera had to say, as I was out of synchronization with typical academic manners, and for a long time, while I had to write my thesis, what people would say to me struck me as highly artificial, even pompous and completely inappropriate.  But I had to continue in those circumstances where everything seemed weird to me.  And that being out of synch kind of led to situations having the potential to damage me.  One really has to take oneself in hand and walk through all of this. 

But the answer to your question as to what full immersion IS, is much easier.  It is when you can read the text all the way through, as a kind of narrative and see it as a WHOLE or from the outside, without breaking it up into little separate pieces.   The text is shocking, so one wants to break it up into distinct parts that one can focus on and digest one by one, but that is a sign of the brain resisting processing the WHOLE.   It means you have hit something that you have to switch off from in order to maintain your illusion of integrity.  But if you cannot process the whole as an emotional and psychological whole, that is by gaining fluidity to move through the text quickly, you are still not a whole person yourself and you still have some instinctive resistances.

So that was the process I went through.  I read the book many, many times.   And in my case it had all sorts of elements in it from my historical past, that had run alongside my earlier existence.   These historical events had been occurring whilst I was a child, and I had experienced the indirect influence of them but I had never experienced them directly for myself.  So it was very important for me to integrate that historical knowledge of myself, to make myself whole.

Why Do We Need Israel / Palestine? | Clarissa's Blog

Why Do We Need Israel / Palestine? | Clarissa's Blog





Of course, in a way Israel is the force of colonialism, which people who feel sensitive in the Western world desire to take steps to dissociate themselves from. One wants to identify overtly with the oppressed and downtrodden, so it is useful if they continue to suffer anguish and keep being oppressed and smashed. One can pulverize the feeling of one’s own Western conceit in that way and feel maschostically alleviated of one’s psychological burdens. It’s a terrible, terrible thing to be the benefactor of colonial power — which all Americans, British and Australians are, in a way. To purge oneself of that sense of guilt by suffering masochistically, alongside the pulverized (at least in the imagination) is therefore thought a boon. Otherwise one may be tempted to flip over and become like Israel, terrorising one’s own native peoples, and scaring away migrants. Therefore an external representation of the whip is always helpful. I’m sure you will all join me in suffering the trials and tribulations that are afflicted on the weak, in the spirit of Hamas, which really means well and embodies the meaning of human freedom and extreme purity. It really doesn’t matter what their ideology is. I, for one, identify with them as one of the smashed. And those who will not do so, represent only the flipside of me, because that is all that remains for them to represent!

GENDER, MASSIVE CHANGE & PSYCHOPATHY

GENDER, MASSIVE CHANGE & PSYCHOPATHY from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.

Boxing for fitness

The map of "shamanism"

1.  The issue of language use at different levels:

I think using the term “shamanism” does lead to some misunderstandings at the middle level of consciousness, with middle level people, because what it means to them is a way of life, or idealizing a the behavior of the ancients.  What it SHOULD mean to the higher level of the mind is risk taking and adventurism within one’s own mind and in relation to the world.   So already we are speaking two different languages – and, unfortunately, this problem cannot be easily solved by changing our terminology, although we could perhaps change our language to be more cryptic in some ways and more open in other ways, thus allowing two simultaneous meanings, on two different levels, to flourish.

As for the term “dissociation”, it also has the exact same problems associated with it.  One one level (the middle level, or herd level) it means pure escapism.  On the higher level, it means heroism.  But first, let me try to explain.

When I had the negative workplace situation at the union job, it was worse than just a “negative” situation.   I’m understating or minimalizing what occurred.   In fact, whereas I had had chronic fatigue syndrome in a moderate way before, now my whole digestive system had collapsed.  I had to take very, very long rests during much of the day, but still without much sign of improvement over a number of months that ran into years. 

I remember thinking to myself at that time.  “Ok.  It’s as if you were riding your bicycle and you were hit by a car and now your body is all mangled.  But if you lie there and wait for me and switch off your mind as much as possible so as not to digest the pain, because that takes up too much energy, I will go and get help and come back for you.”

Actually my mental pain and disappointment at the set back and what it seemed to imply about me as a person was very extreme.  I had to switch off from my rage and my intense sadness.  These emotions were so intense at that time that I did not know how to handle them.  So I went looking.  And that is when I began reading Nietzsche books over and over again, looking for answers.  (I had the basic understanding at that time that I needed to reformat my mind, so I was looking for a blueprint that was more adjusted to MODERNITY and would not mislead me as my existing map had done.)

So switching off from aspects of my own mind whilst I looked for a map to help me became a mode of mental discipline for me.   (And I have always said, and been quite clear about it, that MY understanding of shamanic “dissociation” involves DOUBLING.)

So, eventually, what I have NOW is a map, and one that has continued to help me to restore my physiological and mental health.   It doesn’t matter what you call it, as as the middle level it will still be misunderstood.  The reason why it will be misunderstood?  Because so far as middle level people are concerned, THEY already have a map, which they do not need to look for.  That map is defined FOR THEM by the drive to conformity, which satisfies them completely.

But I had TRIED conformity and that had not worked for me, but had only made me physically ill.  So *I* needed a different map from them.

Now, as you can see I am not talking about anything either particularly ancient OR modern when I speak about having created my paradigm.   I’m just relating things from the point of view of my own experiences and how I think the mind can redeem itself.

(And by the way, you can see I even take Nietzsche’s notion of sickness or invalidity very seriously.)

2.

So am I NOW tough?  Well, my spirit (relating to my internal sensations of success or failure) is well enough happy that I am *sufficiently* tough.   And, whereas sufficient toughness is all that is needed relative to a situation, the outcome is ABSOLUTE in relation to oneself – one EITHER passes the line and restores one’s physical and mental health or one does not.  I have done so – and therefore the outcome is, on a personal level, ABSOLUTE.  But one must always remember that INTRApersonal toughness (between the individual and himself) and INTERpersonal toughness (between the individual and various others) are two different things. 

3. 

SHAMANIC dissociation (the form that involves doubling, to “get help”—one might also call it “instrumental dissociation”) – is not the same as involuntary dissociation.   (One might imagine a situation where somebody involuntarily dissociates, for instance if their leg is blown off, and this does actually buy them time to get help, but these are not precisely the same things.)   The point of shamanic dissociation is to split oneself into two to find answers by research and experimentation and then to return to oneself and make oneself WHOLE again (no longer split).

4. 

Perhaps the process of shamanic splitting followed by recovery can be never-ending (a continuous dialectic), as we temporarily shelter ourselves under a rain umbrella in order to find answers.  But we must, in the end, integrate those answers with our WHOLE BEING, to build health.  Endless doubling is itself not the answer. 

5.

In the end, the problem of communicating “shamanic” experiences may be related to the opacity of language in terms of how it functions in a LIMITED way according to our basic principles of life, which can be very different as explained by the video.  If one’s phenomenological range is bound by the desire and need to conform, one will draw very different meanings from all sorts of terminology than if one’s range is determined by the capacity and need for risk and adventure.  What cannot be avoided are misunderstandings – although the source of these can now be UNDERSTOOD, at least, since we now have a map.

How to communicate, knowing the three human levels

minibus transport in Zimbabwe

The Vector of Patriotism | Clarissa's Blog

The Vector of Patriotism | Clarissa's Blog



There's also another related tendency which is to hand wring about how one may have said something by a photo one had taken that was not politically adept or authentic.   That is truly bizarre.  For instance, this medical student volunteers abroad and then for whatever reason has her photo taken with some local kids.  She later comes back to the US and laments in an exceedingly grandiose style that her picture might have sent the wrong message and that she was truly up herself when she had had that original picture taken with some black kids.



I guess there are all sorts of ways to milk oneself for publicity, but some people want to benefit  by looking at themselves from all angles.  



Heres is a similar critique to the article I read originally.



http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/encounter/5341384

Hilarious Links Encyclopedia | Clarissa's Blog

Hilarious Links Encyclopedia | Clarissa's Blog

How are my Yankees doing? I watched Hurt Locker last night and learned that all men really want is to go to war and all women really want is to have babies.

There was this great scene, where the guy freshly back from Iraq talks about his near miss with danger and the woman placidly hands him a vegetable and asks him to cut it.

The three levels of knowledge

In terms of my own shamanic paradigm, and from what I have deduced from various positions, especially (of course) the great three, Nietzsche, Bataille & Marechera (although in a sense I have learned even more from their critics), the mammalian, middle level of the consciousness is concerned with making moral formulations about social situations.

 

Now, I think that sometimes, or perhaps always, a sign of having a problem with the middle level of human meaning is that one does not know how to make one’s moral formulations MATCH the conventional moral formulations about social situations.  One may have very advanced ideas about morality and ethics, and these may even be better thought through and more productive (producing many better relationships, for instance) than conventional herd morality.  But the herd still penalizes those who cannot read and register social situations according to its own conventional morality.  

 

It may also be that the three levels of the human mind (as I have posited them) are generally able to be associated with three levels of hierarchy within society.  You would have the very lower classes, the manual labor types, or poor and violently uneducated operating basically on instinct and emotional sensation (this is actually not a bad way to be in many respects, as one is untroubled by complex moral systems).

 

Then, at a higher level, which is the middle level of society, you have the predominance of the principle of herd morality and what might kindly be called bourgeois conformity.  One conforms as a matter of principle, in order to belong, and one takes pride in matching others in their conformity.  Thus one does all that one feels one needs to do to be a productive member of society.  This much relates to what we tend to call “middle class values”.

 

Beyond and above this, there is higher level morality, but it is the morality, as Nietzsche suggested, of risk takers.  You are free to do whatever you like, so long as you are willing to take the risk.  This pertains to the higher levels of society, which Nietzsche thought of as aristocratic.

 

So there are three spiritual classes which match the three levels of consciousness we all have in mental structure.

 

But I think the spiritual middle classes never forgive a lack of emotional attunement with their moral system.  They are prone to punishing that absence a great deal because they can SEE only a lack, but they cannot see what replaces that lack, which is a sense of morality and ethics that operates on a level that is even higher.

 

2.  More controversially perhaps, I will say that my own strange immigration experience, which ripped away my sense of moral coordination with the rest of my culture, actually NECESSITATED me to climb up higher to find a more individually suiting morality.  I eventually did – and the sign of my success is that I have good relationships – albeit not so much in the still damaged middle level.  I’m ok with the social lower rungs and the higher rungs, but still not the middle.

INITIATION RISKS: confusing structure with knowledge

Feel good ideology & evolutionary psychology

Q. Which gender is the one suited to shamanism?

The original religion and the need to cross sides

Touched by a Wild Mountain Gorilla (short)

Shamanism and the historical current

In shamanic terms, and even as Nietzsche recognized, it is our wounds that are definitive, in determining whether we see visions and rise to a challenge or do not.  And in Paleolithic times the shamanic seer always had arrows through him.  So it becomes clear that shamanic initiation involves a wounding to the the tree or person who has only just attained adulthood.  After than, they either mediate their visions to society and become a true initiate, or they die.  That is the true dilemma of shamanism – there is no middle path or solution of moderation.  There is only heroic overcoming of one’s ordeal or death.  And perhaps I should have said that earlier about Marechera, but I had thought it obvious at the time, although now that I see it, this was far from obvious to most people.

 

And to say what I have previously mentioned, I think the shamanic type has to be a constitutionally strong type to withstand that wounding and to make something of it.  At any rate, the initiation experience will tend to shorten his life, whilst making it more productive in the short term.

 

But Bataille was born in Catholic France, with the French revolution in the background and lived through a couple of wars.  He also had had a very authoritarian father and hated being dominated, even though in the material sense he saw this as a necessity (to make a living).  So he wrote in this very aggressive way about life and death.   He also had that same sense of flesh and spirit being totally separated, as did Marechera.  Marechera was educated in an Anglican school.

 

Generally, I think there is a lot of intensity in those who have been brought up during war, who also have a religious background.   They tend to express themselves more divisively and more maliciously in some respects.

 

The Disease of Nationalism | Clarissa's Blog

The Disease of Nationalism | Clarissa's Blog



Group emotions (as opposed to nationalist emotions) have always been with us and are a primeval function of our civilised mineds.  It doesn't matter that much to which emblem these emotions are attached.  We will follow along in any case.

Bataille and guilt

 Guilt seems to be the quintessentially religious emotion.  But Bataille does not want to retain in in service of servitude, but rather in support of power.

 

Think about how religious guilt can have a capacity to relate you directly to the universe.  You feel like the whole universe will stand or collapse on the basis of your personal decisions.  It creates a temporary (or perhaps permanent) overinflating of the sense of self-importance, but it does so in a way that can improve the situation by making everything much weighter, more profound and more meaningful than it would be if we just saw the world in terms of our material interests.

 

Who Needs to Coddle the Millennials? | Clarissa's Blog

Who Needs to Coddle the Millennials? | Clarissa's Blog

I’m part of the MINDBLAST GENERATION.

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=jcSgnGrPQUsC&pg=PA98&lpg=PA98&dq=zimbabwe+%22the+mindblast+generation%22&source=bl&ots=Tp6DCs49AB&sig=1dROD2I-EPCSGvVPUMLhEPGGJGY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sV2_U_PdGIrNkQXRgoEQ&ved=0CCMQ6AEw

DAVROS EXPERIMENT

Language as a political control device: part 2

The psyche varies in each case

Know Thyself

My level of diligence in trying to understand some things has always been extreme and this could never be understated, but it has been very difficult for me because the configuration of my own psyche has not been in accordance with the patterns described in much of the material I have been reading (for instance during my PhD).

Books address common phenomena, but usually within a cultural and historical context.  When it is not explicitly noted that there is a particular cultural and historical context to the writing, or what that context is, is can seem as if the book is addressing everybody, in the sense of giving a very broad map of the human soul, when in fact its notions are far more specific and limited than that. 

In my experience, anyway, much of psychoanalytical thinking seems to provide a backwards map.  I mean it has many of the features of my own psyche labeled in reverse, with some additions made and much of what I have in me missing from the map’s representation.

For instance, take the phenomenon of core narcissism.  This is equated with an notion of a core, irrational self, which is also very self-interested or self-absorbed and – because it is irrational in its nature – prone to outbursts or assertions that have no objective meaning or value.  This is what psychoanalysts refer to when they refer to the internal structure of the psyche. 

Logically, if one thinks of the most core part of the self in these terms, it makes sense to assert that by accommodating oneself to society’s demands, one gains rationality, real power and benefits – all the things one ought to want from life, which are not available so long as one is under the sway of the dominance of the core self.

Now that I have articulated it in this way, it makes sense.  But it is amazing how long it has taken for me to grasp a simple concept.  That is NOT because I lack intelligence by any means, but because I could not help having my own SELF as a looming reference point, which meant that I was working with a sense of two maps, each having very different coordinates.

As I have said before, it seems to me that I am closer to being a Gas Giant, with some hardened external features.   I do not have a molten core – which is not to say that after a very great length of time I cannot be provoked!

So when people may suggest, “Oh, you shouldn’t have tried many things, because that only reveals your core narcissism (i.e. your unsightly larval core trying to extrude itself),” I’ve never understood how that could possibly be.  To try or not try many things doesn’t seem to make any difference to a Gas Giant.  One tries this or that, and if it doesn’t work out, one reforms oneself.  What would be of benefit (at one time) would be to break some of one’s rigid features on the outside.  But there was never any core narcissism, just a core diffused state of being. 

By contrast, to speak as if daring too hard in terms of diversity of experience, or daring too hard in terms of intensity of experience was innately wrong-headed leads to confusion and misunderstanding.  (Even in the case of larval personalities, that would be, I think, generally a wrong-headed form of moral criticism.)

So, these assumptions regarding character structure seem too narrow and too inappropriately  moralistic. 

But there is another avenue, too, of misunderstanding.   That is in terms of the capacity to feel guilt.  I believe it is what separates the modern character from the more old-fashioned type, definitively.

The modern type does not feel social guilt or responsibility.  They may and almost certainly do feel individual guilt and responsibility, which can lead to an even greater refinement of character and oversensitivity in some ways, but they do not tend to feel any social guilt, as if something they could have done might affect the whole social group for the worse.  That kind of thing would be very unusual.

The modern type, therefore, thinks relatively narrowly, in terms of the self, and must be gradually inducted to participate in a broader reality through gentle coaxing – designed to draw them out of themselves. 

By contrast, the one who thinks almost entirely in terms of social guilt and responsibility does not have need of any such coaxing.  Imagine saying, “Well try to have a social conscience about you!  You are too narcissistic!” to such a person whose real problem is that they are overwhelmed by social conscience to the point that they are stuck in a petrified condition in relation to what seem to be very fixed and overwhelming Truths.   (If you are really crazy, you can further tell them that any act they may decide to perform is an act of narcissism, because they are trying too many things.)

Bataille speaks to people in the second category of being, but not those who are already very much at ease with themselves and with asserting their wants and needs in the world.

Of course the first type of person just thinks Bataille is encouraging people to act out, to go the wrong way and to become irrational in many regards, but that is because what this kind of person who criticizes thus has the greater need for is a gentle coaxing in the opposite direction – away from the core self and toward the greater good.  But there are some who still haven’t discovered their core selves yet, and for whom such misdirection could be disastrous, even deadly.

The people who need Bataille the most are the old-fashioned types of personality who can still experience social guilt, but perhaps experience it overwhelmingly, and need some method to break down some parts of their encrusted shell. 

There are different sages for different types of people and for different needs, but nothing guarantees their adherents will not misunderstand each other, especially when their psyches have to be mapped differently.

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.





You seem to be addressing me as if I were some kind of ideological enemy who would set about "demonizing" anything.  But I'm not even in America and do not subscribe to American tribal identities, so a lot of your rhetorical power is wasted on me.  Also it leads to you not addressing my actual points.  All I am saying is that the religious paradigm is losing its hold -- a very general historical movement from religion to atheism is taking place.  The consequences are that the monastic modes are being devalued as a matter of course and that business models are filling the vacuum they are leaving (not a practical vacuum per se, but in our minds and hearts).

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.





Right -- the business model is taking over more and more, because there is money to be made from it.  It's part of the movement generally from Feudal society, where studiousness was considered to be inherently moral and righteous as a service to God, to one where making money is the only service to anybody that you owe.  Furthermore, since quality does not matter so much as the making of money (which correlates with the erosion of Feudalistic sensibilities), it does not matter if high quality people are not kept on in permanent positions so much.



That is the real paradigm shift we are experiencing.

Spain’s Unemployment | Clarissa's Blog

Spain’s Unemployment | Clarissa's Blog





The danger in psychologizing the law is that even if one is changed, the other remains the same.  They are two separate entities.  So, making it easier for companies to sack people might, in the end just make it easier for them to sack people.  It may not influence whether any more full time jobs become available in any companies, since nowadays it is easier to take people on as casual labor, as a matter of economic principle.   There's nothing psychological about this.  The more flexible the workforce is, and the more dispensable it is, the more easily a company can make a profit and minimise its risks whenever the market fluctuates.  It's just good business practice to hire a casual labor force and let others take care of their health costs, their days off, their training, etc.

Weird Country | Clarissa's Blog

Weird Country | Clarissa's Blog





I’m also reading amazing things in an old book by evolutionary psychologist David Buss, where he claims that emotional investment in marriage drops off after four to five years. Just amazing things. And all about the fakery that premarried couples engage in, to heighten their value on the market place. And how they’re really looking to heighten their evolutionary success through producing random offspring. It’s just amazing how a how culture can get sucked into a mindset like this.

Nietzsche: risk-taking versus redemption narratives

core selves

The metaphor of coming out of one’s discomfort zone slowly is not one I can particularly relate to, as I have always, in a lot of ways, been in a state of rather high discomfort.  I have learned to distrust all self-improvement programs over the years.  And there are other reasons, too, which I won’t go into, because it takes too long and you would probably have heard much of it before.   I guess, though, a key issue is that people are structured differently psychologically, and we should bear this in mind.  If someone has a narcissistic core, as most people in the West tend to do, as they are brought up to feel they are individual competitors, then a training that teaches them to gradually move from their home base into the wide, outside world, whilst becoming more diverse and shedding their prejudices, might be very good for them.   But I have no such internal core – rather, a very diffused core.   That means I am actually best when I am a little bit prejudicial, and certainly nobody ought to advise me to gradually move away from myself even further, or to be more open-minded than I have been.  That’s because my default state is to be totally removed from myself and absolutely open-minded.  But for me that is not a good thing – and others can sense that too.

So let us think of ourselves as different kinds of planets with different mineral constitutions.  Many will have an obviously a molten core – a feature I have often encountered before.  But I have a very gaseous core.   I’m more solid on the outside than I am internally.   Therefore, moving gradually away from my inner self, or its supposedly narrow concerns, does not make any sense to me.

2.  In my case, what was damaged was not my inner core of being, but my outer levels, more pertaining to the shell.  If you imagine something like a cross section of the Earth, my inner core was in a fine condition, but the external shell -- the colder adult reaches -- were prematurely solidified and misshappen.   Actually, recently I did more work on myself.  I took some very high doses of resveratrol (the red wine extract) along with red wine itself.   This seems to have changed me in some way.  I feel more like the Buddha and can pass situations by that do not appeal to me, without having to fend them off.   So, I've expanded my capacity to cope with more diverse situations, including boring or unappealing ones. I suspect this will make me into a better workhorse when it comes to applying myself to such things as really getting a handle on my martial arts syllabus (which is quite boring to learn because it's very repetitious).

About object relations versus the superego development, another way of looking at it might be that the inner core relates to object relations, whereas the outer shell is superego.  When the problem seems related to a very early stage of development, it is not an issue of pushing the limits, or expanding the outer shell (Bataille's project overall).  That's a problem more to do with people like me, who had a very authoritarian upbringing, which cast me into a form where I complied too strictly with gender roles.  For me, fantasy counteracts this strictness, and is a release valve.   For others, fantasy is a disruptive force and is uncomfortable.  Needless to say, Bataille's destruction fantasies are not for everyone.

The shamanic concept of "soul loss" does seem to address things from an object relations viewpoint, with the idea that sad or frightening experiences can cause parts of the psyche to wall themselves off and seem to shut down.  One has to gently move into those deadened areas, with the assistance of a shaman.

Bataille versus Fromm: the fight for individualism

Q. Which gender is the one suited to shamanism?

On Bataille versus Wolin: outdoors philosophy

On Bataille versus Wolin: outdoors philosophy from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.

Philosophizing outdoors on dialectics, Richard Wolin versus Georges Bataille (and WHY) & more dialectics, along with historical observations and scientific fact.

Cf.http://philpapers.org/rec/WOLLFG

Philosophizing over a drink: Bataille versus Wolin

The catastrophe of confusing emotion with intelligence

Shamanic knowledge

Our deficiencies in some respects are what makes us choose the shamanic path.   I should make it clear by saying that the way we are effectively able to compensate for deficiencies of any sort is what gives to us our shamanic insights (following a shamanic “initiation”).

Let us take me.  I am completely lacking in mammalian drives, in that I cannot even perform grooming behavior in relation to another human and consider that action on my part to be putrid.

But BECAUSE I am so lacking in said mammalian drives, I inevitably draw attacks.  And these attacks are of the sort I can learn from.  Not only that but there was ONE PARTICULAR attack which actually seemed to alter my DNA.  So now I have the ability to wear X-ray spectacles, as it were, because I can actually SEE mounting group emotional intent, and defend myself against it before I am completely overwhelmed.  Whilst in some respects this may not be as good as having mammalian drives and being more directly adaptive, it seems to serve my purpose of survival.

Also this new knowledge lends itself to philosophizing and making intellectual observations about mass psychology, which is nice to be able to do, and certainly passes the time in a pleasant way.

I guess some people never can see GROUP EMOTIONAL INTENT and some people partially sense it, but I have a very detailed orientation toward it now, whilst I had no perspective whatsoever prior to my initiation.

I wouldn’t want people to think my shamanism has to do with mere intellectual posturing.  There WERE significant adaptive changes I experienced, under intense heat.  But on the other hand, my tendency to draw the fire of others had to do with my innate deficiencies.

Prepare for Controversy! | Clarissa's Blog

Prepare for Controversy! | Clarissa's Blog



I remember when I was first taught the word, 'controversial', in high school, after migrating from Zim.  Like everything I experienced then, it seemed like a rather watered down word, even rather passive.  It seems like you need an assembly to sit down and be undecided for a very long period of time, for something to end up being deemed "controversial".

The presumption of agency (as a political ploy)

Q. Which gender is the one suited to shamanism?

Time is the third dimension of our beings

Before you die?

Language as a political control device: part 2

Who has the authority to communicate? part 1

Roads into and out of communication

Roads into and out of communication from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.

It should never be taken for granted that communication has occurred just because one has spoken. There are all sorts of variables that become barriers or facilitators of effective communication.

On REAL COMMUNICATION and how hard that it to achieve

The State and the Individual, Part II | Clarissa's Blog

The State and the Individual, Part II | Clarissa's Blog


Japan is partly embracing neoliberalism but is also become more nationalistic, with the recent reinterpretation of its constitution and the capacity of its military to engage in warfare so long as that seems to be on behalf of its allies. It also has a pronatal policy and certain protectionist tarrifs, for now.



 It will be interesting when aspects of reality that do not pertain to productivity or to the military, are no longer attended to by the government. You will have people, like Obama, for instance, denying the value of education, since after all this does not pertain to the needs of those civilisans who run the corporate hierarchies. You either get trained specifically to work for them, or you don't "need" an education anymore. Your allegiance is not to anything broad or meaningful beyond the corporation you spend your life working for, and have been trained from an early age to fit into.

ideological thinking

Ideological thinking is precisely what cannot understand historical time.  Because historical time is full of ruptures and slaps in the face to the idea of a progressive motion of humanity.  It is really is contingency and madness and sudden catastrophes --- ruptures of ideological tectonic plates.

History is the opposite of ideology -- rather the ruptures that undermine and destroy simplistic ideological thinking.

 The dimension, that can radically transform out natures relates to historical seismic shifts, taking place in the medium of time.  This is the third dimension of our identities, that is generally overlooked when considering who we are and weighing up our characters in moral terms.

We are not two-dimensional beings with a consistent essence, but rather with a third dimension that is history and time -- an authentic a part of our being as the rest of us is.

I have had to be in the process of still piecing these things together -- I mean how the political and the psychological were almost the same thing -- because of the force of a competing paradigm that I encountered immediately after migration, which stated emphatically that these were not the same, but rather that we were all already operating solely as narrow individuals, unaffected very much by what occurs outside of our skin.

So In a very alarming way, I had to attack those presuppositions within myself, too, that were Christian and humanist, that made me imagine that I was not also under the sway of very large historical currents.     I've spent years attacking myself on this basis, just to blast open enough space so that I could see things more correctly.  When one has error in one's own head and in one's own instinctive reactions, reality cannot easily make its way inside, to the point of full acknowledgement.  (And even when one gets a flash of things, it can be almost impossible to convey one's insights, due to the extent that false premises have also lodged themselves in the minds of others.)

I do think that a very extreme, Christian soldier (unto death) mentality was overturned after the Rhodesians lost the war, when "God" had abandoned these fighters.  They had all this pent up aggressive energy, and a sudden almost total corrosion of faith.   That was very bad to be around, especially for someone of my gender.

GENDER, MASSIVE CHANGE & PSYCHOPATHY

GENDER, MASSIVE CHANGE & PSYCHOPATHY from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.

The dimension that can radically transform out natures is involved with historical seismic shifts taking place in the medium of time. This is the third dimension of our identities,which is generally overlooked when considering who we are and when weighing up the nature of our characters in moral terms.

Capitalism = Feminism | Clarissa's Blog

Capitalism = Feminism | Clarissa's Blog



Capitalism allows women an attempt to find freedom, just like jumping on a leaky life raft is better than staying on a definitely sinking ship.  Perhaps land is close by and perhaps the ocean currents will allow a high proportion of people to be saved.  One can never know.

Five discoveries taking science by surprise | Science | The Observer

Five discoveries taking science by surprise | Science | The Observer

The data suggest that the alterations to which genes are turned on or off survive at least two generations: the one that suffered in the womb during the famine, and their children.

They may go much further. A 2011 study published by researchers at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, demonstrated epigenetic mutations that lasted for at least 30 generations in plants. So far, we haven't proved such long-term changes in humans but there are hints that epigenetics cascades through the generations.

History -- the third dimension of our beings