I am now starting to call Reeducation R. The R Bar on Royal Street in New Orleans — see their very own descriptions of the rooms they rent — is a true alkie bar with a lovely pressed tin roof. Since Reeducation seems to have been an addictive substance, I find it fitting to call it R, after the R Bar.
An important tenet of Reeducation is that if you are in an abusive relationship you should not leave it, because you will only get into another. Rather, you should stay and study it and yourself, so that you will know enough when you leave that this abusive relationship will be your last.
There are many problems with this theory, and we are all capable of pointing our fingers and laughing at that inept boy, Reeducation. The most important problem is that abusive relationships take time away from non abusive ones, and they self propagate such that if you are in one, you are probably also in several others.
I freely admit to being a serial abusive relationship victim. I sat out much of Elemental 1B at the Liceo Serrano because I could not defend myself against my deskmate, and my mother saw that I was getting too anxious and depressed. I had a major confrontation with my best friend in fourth grade about bossiness, about which she wrote me a Christmas card many years later saying she had really learned something that day.
In graduate school one of my co graduate students, also a neighbor, kept inviting me to fancy dinners and I would go because it was officially nice. I never understood why I would come home so depressed. Years later I realized the reason and wrote her a letter saying please stop calling me.
When I was a new assistant professor I had a fight in raised voices with one of the instructors. Stop trying to triangulate me into your relationship with your wife, I declared. We are not going to your house for dinner, I have decided. I will not be a witness to another of your arguments. You are taking me home. Now. Turn this car around NOW.
After Reeducation, things got worse. And of course, had I been a more skilled and confident person I would have defended myself better against my deskmate in Elemental 1B. Things would never have gotten so far with my fourth grade best friend, my co graduate student neighbor, or that instructor. Or with Reeducation itself, for that matter.
I still really disagree with this theory of staying in bad situations, for the reasons stated above. I do not understand what I could have learned by continuing to suffer with the people I cite. I believe I learned more by escaping from them. The reason for this is that when you escape bad relationships you do not just go to other bad ones, you go to better ones. You also have more time and attention to devote to your good relationships.
Do you not see? Lots of people are abusive and even those not particularly vulnerable to this can get caught in abusive situations. There is no guarantee that ANYONE can become strong enough to be entirely immune to this. And remaining in a destructive situation does not strengthen your antibodies, it destroys your organs.
I really do not understand on what basis Reeducation makes its claim to universality.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
On R as an addictive substance: perhaps even more dangerous than people who are still drinking are people still committed to the Christian world view?
I agree with the suggestion made above.
I think one of the reasons why reeducation justifies staying in abusive relationships is that it has a worldview defined by humans being sinful creatures. I remember having arguments with my father along this line, before I realised that it was futile to engage with him, in any way. I would say, “You know, it really upsets me when you use my computer without asking, and when you just walk into the room and start criticising me and tearing me down. That behaviour is unacceptable to me.” And he would reply: “Aren’t you also a sinner? You think you are perfect, but you are not. You also have faults, which I will now list.”
What this meant is that you couldn’t ask him to stop doing something on the basis that it was unreasonable or unethical for him to continue. So far as he was concerned, everybody was unreasonable and unethical, and there was no place in the world, and no person, who could operate on the basis of either reason or ethics.
That is what he meant by “Aren’t you also a sinner?”
Yes. That is what is so frustrating about it – it is so circular. You can try and try to cut through to some kind of authenticity but all you get is that solipsism.
That’s where your sparring metaphor becomes useful.
Yes, the sparring metaphor (although it is actually more than a metaphor but something visceral) is the most useful one I’ve found.
And no, you cannot get through to such people, because they are suffering somehow at the core of their beings, with some kind of soul loss, or some sense that life has treated them unjustly in a way that they feel they cannot recover from it. So they resent anyone who tells them that life could be different. It just compounds their sense of injustice, that you are not sharing in the suffering with them, and that you still have high hopes and expectations.
Yes. And this is what I need to remember. I am not 100% good at identifying such people.
Maybe this is it. I tried to help out 2 people today. One tired me out, and the other didn’t. That’s because the second one really wants to solve his current problem, I discern, whereas the first only pretends. Perhaps *that* is what they mean by “fear of success” — you won’t have the same thing to complain about any more?
There is something self-serving and controlling in Reeducation’s insistance that you stay in an abusive relationship. Reeducation was abusive to you, and by defining the masochism of staying in that relationship as healthy, it could get whatever it got out of abusing you for longer.
My father was like that. He said that a person was cowardly and “running away” (the worst sin in his book) if they left an abusive relationship. In retrospect, I saw his own perception of his life as a husband; but his philosophy also served to keep his children, whom he abused, in the same system of abuse.
I see this in some academic departments and their equivalents, as well.
Maybe, PZ. Just be wary of some tropes that can become right wing catch-cries like “fear of success”. (It could easily be used to explain why the underclass is where it is, which we know is hardly an intelligent explanation.) I don’t think that the people who have been damaged are operating on the basis of fear of any particular thing — there is rather a general and diffused anxiety that has come from not being accustomed to a culture that operates on the basis of justice and rationality. When they encounter expressions of these, their emotional make-up is not equipped to handle them. They think it must be just another trick or more devious form of deception. So this is why they do not get ahead when given a helping hand from the standpoint of reason and clear thinking.
With regard to my father, his character structure is authoritarian, which makes it hard for him to emotionally register the communication that reaches him in a non-authoritarian manner. Also he cannot listen to women (even if they do adopt an authoritarian manner). So his character structure cuts him off from a lot of communication that could otherwise be very useful to him. Also, because he does not choose to differentiate between the authority that derives from one culture and authority that derives from another (ie. has no sense of the sophistication of ideological nuances), his emotions are not co-ordinated along any clear lines, but have tended to shatter and go in many different directions. So once again, it is hard to get through to him on a rational basis.
Hi Clio!
Some people don’t see why I am not on the job market as we speak. They say it must be fear of change. That’s another Reeducative ploy: whatever you are doing must be wrong, if you are not ready to jump it must be fear of change, but if you are ready it must be impulsiveness.
(Actually it is sort of like administrator speak: if you are patient, you must not really need anything, but if you repeat your request, you are too greedy or needy.)
Anyway, I am not on the job market at this time because it would be a distraction and I do actually think the local challenges have something mysterious to teach me at this point. I also have reason to believe that if I moved, it would be a lateral move, and all I’d net from it would be the trouble of moving.
But Reeducation had this idea of encouraging you to stay when you were really, really, really ready to go. I think you are right, it is all about keeping people within the circle of abuse.
Although as I say, I am totally fine with the idea of not forcing people to move when they’re not ready to, and supporting them in making smaller or different steps.
I just find it striking that the Reeducative types want to tell you to do the opposite of whatever you know you should (and their weapon is the idea that whatever you “know” is right has to be actually destructive to you, because – I guess as Jennifer says, upthread – everyone is a sinner).
Jennifer –
“Fear of success,” right wing slogan, yes. I think fear of happiness might be a more appropriate term for what I was talking about. And a friend was told she had fear of success, but I am quite sure it wasn’t so neurotic — she had a quite reasonable fear of loss, because promotion meant a transfer.
This is key:
“I don’t think that the people who have been damaged are operating on the basis of fear of any particular thing — there is rather a general and diffused anxiety that has come from not being accustomed to a culture that operates on the basis of justice and rationality. When they encounter expressions of these, their emotional make-up is not equipped to handle them. They think it must be just another trick or more devious form of deception. So this is why they do not get ahead when given a helping hand from the standpoint of reason and clear thinking.”
I need to remember this conclusion. I keep trying to steady people like this by showing them that one can be rational and thus more stable, but really I am doing it so that their instability won’t destabilize ME. *That* is one of the classic child of an alcoholic symptoms I have. But people who want to stay unstable, I should just get away from, given that my real goal is not to get destabilized myself.
With regard to your father — I’ve had a department chair like that, and not realized what was going on. Yet another reason for keeping one’s own counsel.
You should certainly get away from those who want to stay unstable. Actually, I don’t think that anybody really does, but some people, I believe, have discovered a mode of adaptation within the instability. Although they probably don’t want to be unstable, they are holding onto this thread of partial adaptation (to the instability and its felt necessity) and do not want to let it go — kind of like the alcoholic’s self-medicating. They fear that trying something different could be their undoing, since their character structure is so tenuous.
Also Clio is right — that a lot of the strategies of the abuser is to make you co-dependent. It’s like his strategies in life have left him depleted in that holistic psychological sense of “the spiritual” dimensions of life. So, he wants to keep you close by him, so that he can use your resources, and not have to suffer by trying to generate them for himself.
Also with the advice to do the opposite to whatever your drives would counsel — that was also the case with my father. I could just about tell what would be healthy for me by going in the diametric opposite direction to that which he counselled.
“Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the World?”
–they are against worldly wisdom on principle.
Comment 1 – so they “feel” (to me) like alcoholics (unstable, a little unreliable, and so on) even if they aren’t. Which means that anyone who feels roller coaster like, no matter how sweet and calm their surface is, might be one of these people.
Comment 2 – yes. And I have someone trying to do this now. That I should normally be shepherding. But he’s doesn’t want stabilizing information, which is why we argue when he asks for help. If I try to actually give it, this just gives him an opening to throw more stuff. I have to remember this because my default impulse is to act normal. It doesn’t work on him. Now, Reeducation would say I am having this experience because of some flaw in me, but everyone I’ve mentioned it to is having the same problem. So Reeducative theory is his ally.
Comment 3 – wow – so that, too, is a Christian thing. Amazing.
Re. Comment 1: I think the contemporary education system is produced to ‘manage’ these rollercoaster type people — but it also produces them, since ‘behavioural management’ does not produce a conscious ethical relationpoint, or necessarily “discipline from within”. I go to martial arts in order to encounter a different cultural system than the contemporary one — but all who are educated under the present system are suspect to me.
Comment 2: I have often found that those who want you to do all the work for them are jealous of your intellect, and expect you to do penance for having one, by helping them again and again. I would be tempted, in the situation you describe, to feign ignorance on a number of matters that the student wants help with. Even turning the questions back on them in a reasonable way might be considered to harsh or “bullying” by these kinds of retributive souls, but to feign ignorance will make them doubt themselves, because the bait will be that they want to believe that their intelligence or intellectual capacity is at least close to yours, and so despite their doubts, they might agree to assume that you are ignorant. It would at least get them off your back.
Comment 3: Can you see how reeducation uses a model of the sick human being (one who instinctively makes bad choices for himself — Nietzsche’s definition of “sick”) as the only type of human being there is, and ties that in with a kind of sickly notion of transcendence in terms of making the world’s wisdom look stupid.
Also, have you noticed how much pleasure and innate satisfaction those who cannot cope for themselves — I mean by following their own system of ethics — get, when they make YOU look stupid?
Comment 3 – yes, and yes. It is amazing. Especially the universalization of weakness and that weird form of transcendence, which I hadn’t articulated that way before. The pleasure and satisfaction utterly irritate me, which is one of the main reasons I have this blog, but the phenomenon articulated in the first paragraph of this comment is mind blowingly weird.
Comment 2 – Feigning ignorance, I wonder if I can start that credibly at this point. It’s a good idea. It would be easier if this were a student but it’s a frickin’ colleague. Normally we’d just co work but I’ve invoked the bureaucratic chain of command — don’t ask me, ask the department chair. It’s a problem because he sees me doing for and with other people what he claims to want me to do for and with him, and if that were really all he wanted, I’d be glad to do it. But it isn’t, he wants … I hate to say it, but psychic victims, even though he isn’t actually or entirely a bad sort.
Comment 1 – Yes, that is definitely what the contemporary education system is designed to do and I should really, really remember this.
Contemporary (non-third world) white, Caucasian, English-speaking culture universalises weakness, that is a fact. That is why I would rather risk myself in the third world, perhaps living a shorter life than I otherwise might, than remain in constant spiritual danger in this present kind of culture. There is something sick to the core about it, because by giving in to those who believe that they should always feel good (without working for it) and get what they want, the ideological makers of this cultural system have given the weak the complete go-ahead to prey upon the strong. You cannot even deal with these weak folk directly, because they are so thin skinned that anything that doesn’t allow them to suck blood and milk of human kindness all the time makes them think you are abusing them (and in a way, they feel it that way exactly, because when very young babies are refused mother’s milk, it IS a form of abuse — and these adults, who have never learned to stand alone and follow a system of ethics, are, in fact very young children.
Weak preying upon strong, and they call this democracy.
Also, these same people don’t believe in caring for the actually weak, i.e. they are against taxation systems that redistribute wealth. And they rant and rave about the weak who are taking their money and so on.
All of this is extremely ingrained here in Maringouin, which happens also to be where my Reeducator was from — and it’s very Catholic/Baptist, very Republican, and so on — and even the liberals, the ones who would consider that the rich owe some of their surplus value to the poor, are heavily into this idea that the strong owe their blood and milk to the weak, for the sake of “democracy.”
It is truly revolting. And then when you add to it that the weak / childlike types what to psychoanalyze the strong, it gets worse.
[And: I am tired of being called temperamental by people who I tell no, impulsive by people who are indecisive and weak, and slow to change by people who actually are impulsive.]
Latest example: I ran into one of our recent graduates and her sister has recently been murdered. She is quite upset. She likes us and I decided I should organize us to send her a collective condolence card and maybe some sort of gift. I can tell that a message from us would mean a lot. So we are going to do it but that is only because we are not Reeducated. I KNOW what a Reeducated person would say: “Why get involved in a negative event like that, a person grieving over a murdered sibling, there must be something wrong with them…”.
The current ideological system is supremely ignoble. And as you say, “liberal” is often just the flipside of hardline right wing, in that the values have not greatly changed in the opposition, just been given different types of imperatives in opposition.
Of course that condolence card would mean a lot to that woman — and that kind of action is what is at its heart, “noble”, so of course nobody can understand it. 🙂
I call phony on this fake “democracy”. Political democracy, I believe, is what they are genuinely striving for in Zimbabwe. But democracy in the first world as I have encountered it, (whilst having some POLITICAL importance, high value and meaning), has taken on a horrible stink in a psychological sense — not least because its ideological perpetrators lack psychological reflection.
The idea that only the rich and the outright submissive to the status quo can be noble is one of the most horrible corruptions of Nietzsche that I have ever seen. Why do people bother dragging their hairy knuckles out beyond their encampment where they’ve learned five or six meanspirited slogans by listening to Limbaugh, only to proclaim themselves “Nietzscheans”. They should go back and listen some more, and then start applying those principles of meanspiritedness to themselves, until they entirely vanish. Let us at least have some logical consistency about things in this vapid, so-called democracy.
I wonder how much of this I would have figured out without having had this battle with Reeducation. It is ironic that I went to Reeducation — had always planned to go — because I couldn’t figure out how to get away from this type of person. And BAM! Reeducation said that was the model of health! This news was what drove me around the bend.
I think we really do need to tackle the beast directly to come to believe in it. It’s just too counterintuitive to believe in it otherwise. As you have said, the weirdness of it makes it seem incredible — that there is such a prevalent ideology which counsels the idea that it is normal to be at odds with one’s healthier instincts.
And BAM! Reeducation said that was the model of health! This news was what drove me around the bend.
I had a similar experience. I opted to try counselling in order to get some epistemological insights into how things functioned, since it seemed that a lot of people were functioning at odds with values that I would have considered worthy, like self-respect, respect for the dignity of others, and so on. I thought maybe there were explanations I was missing.
Anyway, I was put in a position where it was imputed that I was the monster for missing the obvious explanations that were no doubt clear to anyone.
So then I realised that reeducation extended much further than I had originally presumed.
By the way, I went for a walk today into a part of the neighbourhood not far from my home, but where I have not previously gone before. It is only a couple of blocks away from where I am, but has a very different feel about it as the houses and gardens are unkempt and somehow have an element of kitsch about them. ( I saw a house that had etched on its wall an image of two rabbits kissing, with a pink background in a bubble.)
As I began to head back homewards again, I came across this Catholic church with school attached, and although the grounds were perfect and green, I thought I saw for the first time the actual nature and agenda of this regime. The impression of inhuman horror on this earth turned my blood cold.
Kissing rabbits! 😉
Yes, it’s pretty horrific. All the martyrdom. I am really delighted not to have been baptized. It is true, though, that you have to see it to believe it.
Some lapsed Catholics — especially the kind who had a fervent period, where they really studied the religion and took it seriously — are very astute at recognizing signs of Reeducated ideology and running in the other direction.
You were smart about that Reeducation, understood it as I should have much earlier on. The one I had previously tried was in Brazil, where the exchange rate made actual analysis really cheap if you had dollars. I quickly decided it wasn’t for me because of cultural differences. The analyst, who had a real education and so on, said that although I had certain issues — the issues we could not agree on how to define because of cultural differences — that the right analyst could probably help me figure out more quickly than I would on my own, I seemed to be quite aware and might do just as well reading in psychology and philosophy, thinking about life, and leaving things at that. It was good advice, especially because she meant real psychology and philosophy, not watered down catechism.
I think that if I learn from shamanism, one of the things it teaches you is that life isn’t whole and perfect just because it exists, and it’s not exactly that it is the opposite thing either — it certainly cannot be DEFINED as lacking wholeness or as consisting of imperfection. But it is neither one nor the other, and that is its nature — to be neither one way or the other. So there is not point trying to get psychoanalysed in order to reach one’s state of perfection. When you have understood the incomplete nature of nature, you have understood it in its reality. That is the getting of wisdom, and it is all there is to understand on an ontological level about reality.
This is the main problem I have with these monotheistic religions — things have to be perfect.
I don’t buy the idea that you need psychoanalysis to develop yourself, either.
It’s the basic naive misconception — that if something isn’t perfect it must be because somebody has sinned. This ties in, of course, with the ‘just world’ presupposition. It is the basic faultline in our natures which creates ideological thinking and worldviews. If you can avoid falling into thinking in this way, you will probably avoid a lot of the relationship and ideological traps that are on offer. Otherwise, you will look for someone to blame. This person is usually a woman (or women in general) or a foreigner (or foreigners in general) in accordance with the ease of facility that we can alight on someone to blame.
You can burn a lot of brain cells trying to make the Christian type view make sense. No wonder I lost my ability to think straight during Reeducation. It was amazing to see my level of intelligence plummet so fast.
I am highly tempted to post some anti Christian texts to Facebook. I would educate the students — I can’t say these things in class, but I can on FB … but it would not be good for my job prospects in business, should I ever need such a job.
I’m for saying what I think before it’s too late to do so
Well, check my page — it’s going wild and a friend from about 25 years ago appeared out of nowhere and is bashing the Church as we speak. I’m not supposed to be on FB but I’m going to go over there and make it worse. !!!