coldhearted scientist وداد

I

My dissertation director always imagined I was lazy because I did not place a high moral value on stress, or believe that stress made one more heroic. My Reeducators, on the other hand, were concerned about what they saw as my excess of achievement and my overdeveloped ability to reason, concentrate and persevere. They did not believe I had the capacity to relax.

In fact, I am nearly perfect at concentration. I have a Capricorn Sun, which makes me disciplined and focused, and Libra Moon, which makes me relaxed. That makes me a born achiever, destined to remain balanced. People concerned that I might not know how to work on the one hand, or how to relax on the other, can eat their hearts out. I am ambidextrous in that regard.

II

Undine has some very good tips on concentration, one of which is to “cut out the noise.” For me the noise was always mental noise – the kind of noise that comes from worriers and other petty detractors – but I was quite adept at turning off this noise until I met Reeducation. By the time I met Reeducation, I was an assistant professor, so concentration was essential. Concentrate or perish. This sentence was not scary for someone with powers of concentration like mine, but it was terrifying when, eventually, I lost my powers of concentration.

Losing my powers of concentration was also terrifying in itself, since I could no longer recognize myself. I had never needed to believe inspiration was necessary for writing – all you needed was a title, a focus, and a good first sentence – but now I needed complex ceremonies to detoxify the scene of work. I needed to watch and wait, not for outright inspiration, but for rare hours of clarity. I could no longer simply set hours and work, because I could not drive out the conflicting voices – some saying it was not just work, but my very existence which was at stake, others saying that if I managed to work, I would soon find myself among the damned.

III

Reeducation, as we know, said that to be able to concentrate was in and of itself pathological, and that the material upon which I had chosen to concentrate was proof that I had additional pathologies. I might have to start taking dangerous drugs, and stay on them my whole life. I should be hypnotized and recover memories. I must come to believe these things were necessary.

Learning from Reeducation that the ability to concentrate was no virtue, while remaining aware that not to concentrate was, if not life- then at least livelihood-threatening, and still needing to beat back, as we all do, my petty detractors, was a juggling act I could not master. It created a hurricane of mental noise which did, finally, break my concentration. I was then weakened enough that every kind of noise could come in. I tried to choose more positive, less convoluted thought patterns. I knew what these were, and how I would like to be able to think. But the thorn of Reeducation was deep within me.

This was not a good thing. It liberated nothing, for my concentration was hiding nothing – it was only a work skill. But during that period I lost concentration. I had never feared work before, but now I did, and for good reason. I had learned that if I worked, I should also question my sanity. That made work scary.

This is why I like the phrase, “turn off the noise.” I often say it. I have just learned to say it a great deal better than I had ever known how to do. Work and everything associated with it had been converted by Reeducation into proof of unmitigated and unmitigable guilt, and was thus a source of unmitigated and unmitigable pain. But my work is mine, and I am recapturing it from Reeducation. And my story is my own, and I am recapturing it, as well.

IV

Reeducation was a true vampire as far as time, energy, and attention went. It demanded concentration and left one spent. “You are making a wonderful investment in your future, give yourself credit,” said the Reeducators. It felt more like delivering the future directly to the Devil, but we were instructed to have faith.

During those years I finally became accustomed to having very little free time, energy, or attention. By dropping the principles of Reeducation from my day, I am amazed at how much free time, energy, and attention I have gained. I am teaching four courses, three preparations. It is like being on sabbatical.

V

As should be clear by now, my powers of concentration improved not because I learned how not to “procrastinate,” but because I became unblocked. And the key to productivity, it is said, is to drop perfectionism. This is true as far as it goes, and I have often said it myself. But if screaming silently at yourself has been made so normal for you that you do not recognize it for what it is, and if, furthermore, you have been taught to scream at yourself because you are working well and not because you are not, then merely setting sensible hours and remembering to drop perfectionism is no remedy. It is no remedy because it does not speak to the issue.

The only simple solution I ever found to the block I contracted in Reeducation has been to pull that thorny bush out by its roots. I had tried to trim it back, so that it could produce nice berries if it wished, and yet not block my path. But the variety of Reeducation I had was not good for my soil, and it poisoned my garden. I am pulling it out by the root.

VI

Pulling Reeducation out by the root entails actively remembering to resist its sentence on intellectuals – if you are an intellectual, it is then also true that you cannot feel and are alienated from reality – and its more general sentence, in no circumstance believe in yourself. These sentences are utterly disabling.

VII

An utterly different issue of concentration for me is boredom. It is stifling where I live. Without concrete plans to be away on the weekend, I cannot concentrate during the week, and without concrete plans for term’s end, I cannot concentrate during the semester. I used to think I was bored because I was not committed enough to what I do. One ought to be willing to do it in just any circumstances, I have often heard. It occurs to me that the opposite could be the case. Perhaps it is that I am so interested in it that it is particularly painful to practice it at the low levels required here.

VIII

The noise I need to keep firmly off, is this half-interrelated, half heterogeneous set of neurotic and immature ideas:

1. You are performing a useless task. Those are the voices of Reeducation and of empty careerists. It is not useless if it is educational or fun, or if it gives you a sense of mastery (and, by the way, mastery is not a bad thing, and wisdom is not power-madness, no matter what anyone says to try and keep you under their power).

2. You are performing a task at which you will fail, or which will be construed as a sign of failure even if it succeeds. Part A is just your undermining mentors speaking, and Part B is just Reeducation speaking.

3. The point of performing this task is to satisfy someone else, not yourself. This again is just a combination of the meaningless speech of undermining mentors and Reeducation.

4. Your success at this hurts other people. That is just people with insecurities of their own speaking, and in particular, people against the existence of women intellectuals speaking.

5. But I want to escape from here now! Remember how you used to be, before Reeducation, taking care of things in the present and planning things for the future. Stop listening to Reeducation’s sentence that to do this was to take an inappropriate amount of control over your own destiny. The most efficient escape in this moment is to stand your ground and stand above circumstances – not by ignoring them, or by saying they are not bad, or by expecting to be unaffected, but rather by seeing what they are and remembering you can connect to the highest road.

Reeducation is gone and you can use your strength for yourself now, and for your people. You owe Reeducation nothing, and you are no longer enslaved.

Axé.