Keys to understanding me

The key to understanding me is the political and historical key.  With that (set of) keys, you can achieve an almost complete understanding.

It really isn’t more complicated than that.  I think Western ego psychology has a lot to answer for in making very, very obvious things seem hard to observe.

But there are some things that differ, very significantly, from how Westerners experience themselves.

The first key is authoritarianism.

This means the rigid adherence to external form, no matter what one may be feeling inside.

That has always been my training – my early cultural conditioning from the youngest age.

The second key is I had very young parents who did not manage their fears about a child’s possible (but unlikely) non-adherence to authority and authoritative norms.

The third key is that I was ripped out of my home soil just at the age when adulthood is being established and one is putting down roots.

A fourth key is that emotions were not engaged with in a lavish way, due to the war.

A fifth is the feeling of shame through losing one’s homeland (my father’s sense of shame at God abandoning him through the loss of the war)  and because others said the natural behavior one had learned was suspicious in all manner of ways (did it evince racism or delusions of superiority?  If there was even a hint of suspicion that it did – not actual content, but suspicion – I was taught a “lesson”).

All of this has a political and historical meaning and origin.  There is no need to look further, or deeper for something strange, as they will not be found.

Furthermore, my reactions are very logical.  If a certain group of people create a setting where I am treated with suspicion, I am not comfortable with them.  But if they do not create such a setting, then everything is perfectly fine.  I respond to a trusting situation with trust and an untrusting situation with fear.

These facts are all quite obviously on the surface of reality.  So let’s not mystify.  Let’s just accept them.