coldhearted scientist وداد

I

Yesterday was John Muir’s birthday. It was very beautiful and in fact peaceful, but I had written this post days earlier. It said that in order to achieve the peaceful state corresponding to John Muir I would have to articulate a list of the usual trades and traits of people I find exhausting — the people I aim, with a few exceptions, to eliminate from my life. Only this way, I had decided, could I avoid these entities  and remain peaceful. As I say, there are exceptions, but generally speaking I these are the classes of persons I find most exhausting:

1. The envious and the resentful. For example, M.A.s who resent Ph.D.s, Ph.D.s who resent professors, new professors who resent the quietude of experience. So far as I can tell, these entities are at least as patriarchal, as egotistical,  and as power mongering as the people they envy or resent. I have cast off patience with all invasiveness, arrogance, and meanness from members of this group. They are newly on my watch list.

2. The passive agressive and the powerless. For example, women who are being supported by men. People in this general class have a tendency to sadism. I understand their situations, but to subject myself to their cruelty  will not actually help them. I have said this before and I am saying it again. They are on the top of my watch list.

3. Those who substitute religiosity for ethics. George W. Bush is an example. I have already said it — this group lacks ethics, and covers that with religiosity or “spirituality.” Their tendency is to authoritarianism and misogyny. They are more often than not mean, which stunts them intellectually. I am on red alert about this usually soft spoken crowd.

4. Those who teach so they can enmesh with people less powerful than themselves, and exert power. If they are that way with their students, they will be that way in all of their relationships, so beware.

5. Those who have or want children so they can enmesh with someone over whom they hold and exert authority, and so that they can hold social power. These people resemble those described in point 4, and could come to resemble those described in point 2.

II

I would only be able to have the peace of John Muir, the post said, if instead of feeling sorry for all of these people as a Christian would, I resolved to push right past them the next time they tried to accost me. Note, said the post, that some people fit all five categories. Those are the most dangerous. People who fit only one may actually be quite benign.

In the Popol Vuh, the post said, this would not be a question of social relations but of cosmic warfare. It would be all right to plan to fight these enemies on a ball court, or to sink them in the bayou. The post said these were in fact the indicated remedies, and pointed out that they are actually kinder than pity.

III

Was I angry? Yes. Is there something wrong with that? No, although my opponents said so. I am tired of being manipulated into supporting the activities of such people, or allowing myself to be mistreated by them. Those are the errors.

In Reeducation, the correct response to it all would have been to ask myself what I had done to deserve these peoples’ meanness. Had I done this I would not be over the whole sorry episode yet. Since I didn’t, I am. Reeducation would not like this but it does not understand one of its very own better tenets, namely that one cannot control everything.

Instead, I am over it all. Reeducation would not approve of this, but I do not mean there will never be another incident; I mean I have not internalized this one and I am therefore better protected before. Reeducation would also not approve of the ranking of persons in which I am about to gleefully engage. John Muir was superior to some other entities, such as Reeducation.

IV: FOOTNOTES

1. I am increasingly convinced that many forms of Christianity are downright  Satanic.

2. As I have said before, one of the aspects of Reeducation I find the most disturbing is that it fascinates and thus controls because it is fraught with contradictions.

3. This prevalence of contradictions mirrors the weak character structure mentioned in a recent thread here. It would seem that Reeducation addresses people saddled with these character structures. It attempts to keep them stable within them, since that is as much as one can do. That is why it does not encourage major or independent change, and assumes it must be joined for life.

Axé.