Now everyone is quoting from Naomi Wolf’s important book and reposting video and paper interviews with her. Qlipoth offers this fascinating quotation (emphasis is mine):
I have a section in the book about how lies in a fascist shift serve a different purpose than they do in a democracy. In a democracy, people lie to deceive. In a fascist shift, lies serve to disorient. Lies in the service of a fascist shift make it hard for citizens to trust their own judgment about what’s real and what’s not. Once citizens don’t know what’s real and what’s not real, they are profoundly disempowered. The Bush administration seems to have learned that lesson, and they regularly name things the opposite. And there’s a long historical precedent for making people feel that there is no such thing as truth.
Today we are also observing a moment of amazement in honor of my abusive relationships. I have just discovered how many of them there really have been and high degree of normalcy I accord them – especially since Reeducation which said they were the way of the world. I have since a young age known that I was vulnerable to total psychic destruction. I was vigilant about it and kept getting stronger. In Reeducation I let my guard down and it has been hard to stay above water since.
I started this weblog, for instance, as a lifeline to the surface. The original intention was to use it as a space in which to speak as my unwounded self, and allow that self to grow here. But the blog soon asserted its own identity as a place in which wounds are brought to light. At this moment I am amazed to see how much pain litters the landscape.
As you reach the top of the next rise you see that another mountain range has added itself to the vista. The ranges march on and on, each taking its own color from the angle of the sun, marking the distances. This rise smells of lavender and sage, exuding dusty-sweet oils in the sun. As oak gives way to pine, sandstone to granite, the smell of the last acorns rises from the little valley, where the waters jump from rock to rock.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Nota bene: These are the reactions or presuppositions I always have.
1. You must obey all orders to the letter no matter what. If you do not you will definitely lose your life, so do exactly as you are told even if it seems unwise or dangerous, or if it involves terrible torture. If your orders lead you toward truly unbearable pain, still do not defy them openly, as you will be sent somewhere worse. Instead deploy your cyanide pill. Of course, if you deploy your cyanide pill you will die and will thus lose your chance of escape. Therefore only do this if it is absolutely necessary.
2. Never assert your rights, and never act in your own best interests first. These things will get you executed instantly. Also never do what is your first choice. Your enthusiasm will be noted and you will be executed instantly. Therefore always identify second choices and choose among these. That way you will survive, and you may even do well if you choose wisely among second choices.
That kind of regimented thinking is how I used to think/react. Definitely. It is a problem of superego. You can see how it functions: If I don’t obey society’s rules rather than my own, I will be cease to exist. So it is what Freud called superego.
The good news is that superego, like any common garden vegetation, can be combatted. If it is used to being boss, it needs to be shown that it doesn’t always get to rule. You can employ various behavioural techniques against it.
When I realised that my superego was making me so “good” that I was serving myself up on a dish for others to consume at will, I formed a strategy to undermine the death-grip that superego had on me. So I said, “What is it that I will not do because superego will not let me?”
An obvious answer is that I would not lie.
So, I determined to go against superego’s grain, by making a point of lying on occasion. This was not to lie in order to deceive or to make a habit out of lying, but only to break superego’s grip.
This had a good effect. I felt free-er. Next, I found other things that superego didn’t want me to do, and made a point of doing them.
The answer in my case, the one that covers all instances, is “be really independent” or “pursue your own best interests.”
Now I understand something about the infamous 12 step programs that, unbeknownst to me, were the basis of Reeducation. I am of course against them because if they were worthwhile, in my view, it wouldn’t take years and years to decode the basic ideas.
Anyway, one incomprehensible thing they say is that you are to create a God of your own choosing and then obey it. It seems that what this may be is a way of working with superego. For people dominated by superego and unable to get out of it, it is necessary to create a superego which says what they want to hear. I am of course against that since it means no structural change, but I think at least I see why they came up with it.
I perhaps used to do something similar/want something similar – seek situations in which what was required was what I wanted to do, so I could do as I wished without bucking authority. That of course at one level is normal – but what it does not give practice in is operating independently when at odds with a structure.
I am not entirely sure about these things – I suspect I am overreading.
yeah, the superego thing is a big issue. I think it was what Nietzsche was getting at when he said “too cowardly to lie.”
but what it does not give practice in is operating independently when at odds with a structure.
You need a high level of zen to do that. I think you really need to reach a point where what you do does not define your being (for instance in a situation where you are forced to play a role in order to survive) AND nonetheless you manage to do what you need to do in order to express your inner will.
High level of zen – OK, good. Sometimes I think it is only I who did not have it! But: Reeducation was about sinking to lower levels of zen. I have to remember to channel the higher ones.
Some of the prisoners I work with do have this level of zen. That is why I like them.
You work with prisoners, profacero! So did I until my retirement.
For many years I liked them, but now that I have left the system, not so much. I realized I was putting up with them, a bad habit of mine. I tend to put up with people because at some level I’ve bought into the idea that their lives are more important than mine.
I’m getting over that notion.
i’m reminded of double speak – george orwells 1984…
Azg – doublespeak, exactly. [And, to continue harping on my constant theme, I claim Reeducation also had it, although I know the line on that is that I just didn’t understand.]
Hattie – yes, I put up with people in the same way. But I don’t work with prisoners professionally, so I don’t have to put up with ones I don’t like. Otherwise it would be *way* draining. Here’s to getting over that notion that others’ lives are more important than one’s own!
To be really exact: raised to be 100% obedient, and to be 100% sensitive to others’ needs. To anticipate these.
The other thing I got trained to: I would get care and consideration if I could raise my pain levels high enough, by just taking enough of whatever was dished out. If I could show due suffering and exhaustion I would then get relief.
The lessons in the first paragraph are destructive enough, but those in the second one are truly absurd … for in real life, if you do that, people will just say, hunh? why did you?
Heh.
I had different programming from that. Actually, when I tried to do my secondary school practicum I found that it has been expected that it should be second nature to me to “be 100% sensitive to others’ needs” and “To anticipate these.” Nonetheless, that was not at all something within the range of my capabilities. I have tried to describe the feelings I had about this, before. It was as if I was trying to look closely, all too closely at some exquisite needlework, and it was so fine that I just couldn’t see it. I was expected to see it, and every now and then I almost felt like I could see it, but ultimately trying to look for something that fine was just giving me a raging headache.
So, of course I didn’t pass the practicum, and having left, complained about the offensive feminisation of the profession.
But, you know — different upbringings. I was raised to be stoical and to accept a certain level of harshness in everything, without batting an eye. If somebody near you cried, you felt sorry for them — not so much because they had something to cry about, but because they were losing their composure in public.
Yes – it’s odd – I never expected the mode of being I was raised with to apply to school or work. This being perhaps because I wasn’t raised for school or work, really, but to be someone’s … weak wife, or something, I don’t know … ? I was very much surprised in one of my academic jobs when it turned out women were expected to be this way.
I am not sure how people learn to cry in public or at work. Several times I have been told I should do it because it works but I do not know how and the idea of doing it, especially since I do not know how to play the whole scene, sounds very uncomfortable to me.
The crying thing doesn’t work in Australian culture, mostly. Women are sometimes expected to cry maybe, but they are no rewards for it. Or at least rarely from the upper echelons. Oh well.
I’m not sure what I was raised for. My theory is that I was raised as a boy and then when puberty began to hit, the prevalent parental idea began to change that I would become something putrid, horrible, uncontainable, and that in order to pre-empt this, I had to be punished as much as possible, and robbed of my self esteem. In any case, that didn’t happen — but what did happen was that the amount of punishment dished out for no good reason made me exceedingly cynical and distrustful. If you cannot hope to win no matter what you do, you retreat from the demands of the social order. You do your own thing. So, somehow all of the hatred fueled my firey independence.
They have to rob you of your self esteem in order to make you a proper girl, it seems. This was what happened to me but it was early on, and then again much later. That gives me this uneven quality – too submissive on the one hand (I do not trust anyone and I tend to fall into line), and very independent and rebellious on the other (again, I do not trust anyone and my instincts, if I do not just fall into line, are to fight or flee). It means I’m not fully mature since I’m still reacting.
Yeah. I think they were in a very ideological groove, thinking, “femaleness is shameful and horrific, but the very best we can do for our child is to maim her so much that she has no choice but to fulfil her role without the kind of struggle that would make it worse than it has to be.
But actually their whole approach backfired, because it made me supersenstive to how identity is a social construct. Also the exceedingly heavy helpings of pain delivered in order to help me adapt to the identity caused me to refuse it absolutely, instead.
I think what I should do is figure out what the identity is, so that I can refuse it absolutely. Or something like that.
I am still slightly reeling from some realizations I’ve had due to having ended a ‘romantic,’ or in any case somewhat romantic relationship over the weekend. It has taken being out of it to realize how much I was caught in a very traditional ‘girl’ role while in it.
I am starting to think that “woman” and “abuse victim” mean the same thing. I need to redo my identity then. 😉
The way I see it is that women have been allocated the masochistic role in society, in relation to male sadism. This is really unfortunate as it prevents enjoyable relationships between men and women, which are only possible when there is respect and trust. Instead, where-ever there is traditionalism, we have men acting impulsively and violently, without thought for women, and women being expected to be the invisible and malleable crack-fillers for society — repairing the holes in the social fabric which males have created through the supposedly untameable impulsiveness.
Yes. And, oddly, this is why men who are *supposedly* hip to feminism are often the hardest to deal with … the s/m aspect of the whole thing then just goes underground. Women always make the big concessions. [And yet men seem to think they are making them … and/but the concessions they are making are not actually to women, but to patriarchy itself.]
Right. But the GOOD news is that if you do not have this concessionary tendency about you, you can really get a great male. Surely they are out there, because I got one. Basically, directness is the key. Say what you want and what you do not want. And a high sex drive helps a lot as well.
Low sex drive, though, is a big part of what I x’d this last one over. But I am not direct enough *even though* I think I am – it seems you have to be *extra* direct with men when they want something different from what you want. And I am not direct enough anyway since my tendency in all of life is not to expect what I want, but to choose what I most want from the things offered.
I tend to plan for concessions at the outset in everything, sometimes to such a degree that I lose sight of what I would really wish for (or name it something else – about which more in the next paragraph). I also tend, if I do come out with what I really want and it is refused, to accept what *is* offered when really I should say no to all deals I do not want unless I really need them (e.g. jobs or something). “What I really want” I am definitely too foggy on.
What I mean by naming it something else: I will say something like, “I want a situation in which it is all right to be/do X” as opposed to “I want to be/do X.” What I really want: to be myself (hence the blog, the place where I am that, or practice being that) … but I still think I need *permission* for that IRL, which is my problem, or so it seems to me.
I will say something like, “I want a situation in which it is all right to be/do X” as opposed to “I want to be/do X.”
Yeah, this is a really hard one to deal with, I think. I think the first kind of thinking you mentioned is not all bad, because it is Utopian, and it contains an aspect of universalism, and having such a principle would cause you to generally improve your environment to make it more liveable — not just for you but for anybody else who wants to come along and find things pleasant in some way, without having to move heaven and earth to make things into something they were not at first. So it is really not wrong to want situations in which you can swim around freely and experience your environment as pleasurable. That said, you shouldn’t fetishise this desire for Utopia.
ON the other hand, really being oneself and knowing what one wants is an outcome that one reaches through a lot of hardship. I still maintain that the quickest route to getting back to authentic being is to find some thing that you would “never do” (due to fear or pain or superego, whatever) and then do it.
“fetishise this desire for Utopia”
Correct. This is one of my typical errors. To some extent Utopia can always be made now.
What one wants: I cannot remember not knowing: autonomy, freedom, and a huge, creative or intellectual project with societal impact.
I am not entirely close to having these things, however. What one would “never do” … well, small steps … I am trying to think of something which would actually be freeing. I am about to go do something at work which isn’t something I would “never do” (it is actually something I have wanted to do for some time and thought I should do) but is something I haven’t been allowed to do. I’ve accepted the no answer up to now but uncharacteristically I have decided to be persistent on my own behalf. We’ll see how that goes. 😉 Just thinking of it already feels transformative.
OMG: re the main topic here “my abusive relationships” – by writing a comment at Lisa’s I realized what one of the main abusive moments was in my recent history. Post is here, my comment is the second one:
http://lisachase.blogspot.com/2007/10/things-to-do-so-that-you-dont-obsess.html
So here’s the thing: during the Christmas break in which my tenure letter came, I, for financial reasons, did not plan anything special for Christmastime except going to the MLA to recruit for us. I had two important deadlines on neat projects I should have completed.
I got very depressed because my parents were trying to buy me a car and wanted it bought now, but wanted me to be sure I tried every car and considered every car, when really I knew what I wanted and was over 40 and did not need to prove I was making a good decision as a 15 year old would. Yet I did what they wanted.
At the same time I was also beginning to see my problematic X and I already had a feeling of foreboding about it. So I was pleasing my parents, boyfriend and department (nominally), not doing anything for myself because I was being financially “sensible,” and I lost energy for work and fell into a great depression. And it was *all* about falling into the clutches of others, alien wills.
This is interesting and is to be remembered.
I don’t have anything like that situation — but I don’t have parents rich enough to buy a car for me.
Yes – parents rich enough to buy a car are a mixed blessing. They mean well. But it is also a control mechanism – or was, back in the day. They are much milder now. And I can guarantee that confidence is a far more valuable gift than money.
See also this video lecture by Wolf:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RjALf12PAWc … about early German fascism and parallels to the current U.S.
The German fascism parallel is interesting. I was able to see the whole of this video. In Australia, we have abiding problems with Howard’s regime, which is polarising the wealth away from the regular working classes. This right wing government is profoundly oppressive — as evidenced by Howard’s line on debating the opposition leader, last night, on TV. He encompasses a kind of 1950s unresponsiveness to change — but most dangerously slow because of what is on George Bush’s religious-minded agenda, and also because he seeks to put the abstraction of “the economy” over and above addressing the issue of global warming.
OMG so Australia, or at least some in it, feel that it, too, must follow Bush?!?
The prime minister does anyway. I find it strange — the fascination that little johnny howard has with the dufus. Last night, he spoke as if the entity actually had a personhood, as if, for instance, he was capable of “coming around” on climate change. That startled me! I thought, “wow, the attribution of a mind to something inert! –that has to be a first!”
Ay ay ay. What he is going to do is attack Iran and this is not at all good.
I have been saying since about 1990 that fascism would come back into fashion. See Wolf:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112107R.shtml