While I remain on strike there will be occasional guest posts from a shaman. He is speaking now.
He reminds us that it is well justifiable to enslave Africans because they are not of the same species as us. They are less intelligent and better suited to physical labor. They are insensitive to poor conditions, and less sensitive to pain than we are. They came gladly to us … [here insert several paragraphs from the papers of most any 19th century slavocrat].
He goes on to point out that people in abusive relationships should be encouraged to remain where they are. These people, usually women, are not like thee and me — they actively seek such relationships. They search high and low, beat the bushes and sift the corn, until they find an abusive man.
So if they are in a relationship with one such, and I do mean a relationship of ANY kind [it could be a coworker, it could be anyone] and it is not life threatening, they should stay. Because if they leave they will replace the relationship very quickly, perhaps this time with one which is life threatening. We must therefore thank their abusers for protecting these women. Give them your hands.
And if any woman asks you, “Do you see anything odd in my relationship? Do you think this is too small a bruise to matter? If I leave will you say ‘good for you’ and not ‘you cannot make it on your own, you know’?” — be silent.
How do you like this shaman? I think he is brilliant. He also doubts the sincerity and intellectual capacity of anyone who would shrink at the logic in his first example, but embrace it in the second.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
This shaman sees into the heart and soul of man, and casts a disparinging eye upon every impurity of motive. He sees those whose efforts create too much off a ripple in the pool of life to be extremely and shockingly impure of heart and motive.
Another thing this shaman might wish to tackle:
“When you point out something negative about the world, you become its origin and the cause of this negativity. If it weren’t for you pointing it out, we would all live in paradise and enjoy bliss.”
Yes, that is the New Age statement I blasted those ladies for and that Reeducation liked, too — except that it thought one was in denial if one were not faithful to ITS negativities. This statement is breathtakingly inane.
Related is the Americans’ idea of freedom of speech. My friend with the boats has many virtues BUT is one of those typical Americans in this way.
Conversation the other day, on how the university has famously sold this gorgeous piece of property it has, to a nonprofit that will turn it into a park. This is universally hailed as good because they were going to sell it to a developer who would have put apartments and a shopping center on it.
There is a big ecology activist who opposed this most recent sale on the grounds that nonprofits are not as pure as people think, and that if the property passes out of state control then the public will no longer have say in what happens to it or the right to examine the ledger sheets on it.
Me: People are mad at Mr. X [whom we both know personally] for having taken this stance but I wonder, is he maybe right … should/could the University just have done this in such a way as the land could continue to be public property?
Him: Well, Mr. X is entitled to his opinion, and any opinion will have opposition.
Which means he isn’t interested in discussing that question, which is fine, but what I notice is that it’s the typical American response to controversy — because everyone is entitled to their opinion, nobody is allowed to discuss anything, or feels they are out of bounds to discuss anything (despite the venom spilled on Fox News and so on).
But mostly, they feel exonerated from thinking, and opinions are sacred like emotions … or as one old friend famously put it, rude to ask about or criticize the way it is rude to ask about or criticize dick size (it’s a private matter and people are born as they are born — and in this culture that is applied to opinions, too).
Americans hate to think. Or they get hold of some little idea and worry it to death.
Exactly.
HI Z
It’s one of the things I’ve also found about Australians, and I do believe that this generalisation extends to the Brits, in most instances too. Unless the matter at hand can be framed in some Nationist way, nobody has a strong opinion on anything. That means, nobody has any backbone or any moral position on anything.
Nonetheless this bland postmodernity does tend to serve the existing power structure — it is, in other words, reactionary, or at the very least simply mindlessly conservative.
And so you find that the practice of feeling entitled does not at all diminish under such circumstances. Rather, if you are male, you do expect all women to show all sympathy if you stub your toe. However, if you are a female, you generally cannot expect reciprocal sympathy even in contexts more dire.
This profound lack of self-examination, which is assumed to be Freedom Itself!
People should not imagine that because their reciprocal obligations escape THEIR attention that they also escape mine.
Lost your job?
— Oh you seem to be a bit emotional today. A kick in the ass might help you get over it!
(and so on.)
Which is to say, I DO reciprocate — even in the negative.
Freedom defined as utter and profound lack of self examination, that is exactly it!
And of course it explains why Americans find those 12 Stones so profound, for they do request a small amount of self examination. (The 12 Stones were invented in Merrie England, though, I do believe.)
Also, if all of this is Anglo, then it explains why I feel so foreign East of the Mississippi river (or of the Sabine) which is where the real Anglo cultural territory starts (in my experience).
It’s not olde worlde anglo — since the culture that I come from was HUGE on taking moral responsibility. I think it’s postmodern. The lack of any guiding morality or capacity for self reflection is postmodern per se.
And yes, I can see, now, why the 12 stones might be considered profound in that case, as you say.
One of the things that I think we need to do — you and I — to assure our survival in contemporary contexts, is to get away from the attitude of “blaming”. Certainly let us not get away from an ironic attitude — however, it seems to me that one blames those things that are capable of reflecting upon their actions, that are in a position to differentiate between right and wrong.
So, I think we go very wrong in our blaming attitudes.
My view, as I have stated, is that quiet reciprocation (with the anticipation that this will certainly NOT be understood at all) is far more suitable a response within these current cultural circumstances.
True re olde worlde Anglo. But I wonder if it is postcolonial or something. There is this huge imperative in colonial and early Republican writing in the U.S. to get away from everything, start fresh and innocent, etc., and apparently lots of struggles around this. Tom Paine was big on responsibility but he was a loser radical … the fat cats were more amoral. So it seems to actually be some POST Anglo thing … although I really am just speculating at this point.
Quiet reciprocation, yes, if I could achieve this but I still find that I need to identify what is going on. So I don’t really see myself as “blaming” as trying to understand a situation — if not I just feel oppressed and don’t know by what or why exactly, or I’ll be agitated and irritated about something minor because I am trying to be prematurely Bodhisattva-like about whatever is really happening.
I think it COULD be post-colonial in the sense of “we feel bad about colonialism, and we really want to feel differently about ourselves, so let us hypthesise for ourselves that we are all individuals, now, with free will, to the point that nobody has the power to vamp on any other person. In that case, we would be free from colonial guilt and the burden of domination (or submission).
“And now that we have hpothesised such a world — voila! It is true! yay!”
—–
But by “blaming”, you know that I just meant the dynamic whereby one points oneself out there, and takes a risk by saying something, thus making another person have to defend themselves from ever having done anything wrong in their whole lives.
What I saying is that one should no longer risk coming across as a blamer. There are no moral courts to arbitrate our case, anyway.
Rather, justice is in our own hands to deal out.
I’m putting my own system into place herewith.
And by ‘quiet reciprocation’ I mean along the lines of the French Resistance. NO “blaming”, just reciprocation. Good for good and bad for bad.
OBSESSING ON SOME THINGS I AM READING AND ON THE DISCOVERY THAT “CLIO BLUESTOCKING” IS STUDYING MY FAMILY, AND THAT THERE MAY BE CLUES TO THE WHEREABOUTS OF FREDERICK DOULASS’ SISTERS AT THE PLANTATION IN MISSISSIPPI:
Americans, you know I don’t even think they felt bad about colonialism, this place was theirs to take, they felt by and large … although Jefferson, for instance, felt bad about holding slaves, and kept trying to figure out how to get in a position to free his (he couldn’t because without them he couldn’t keep current on his debts, would have had to sell up entirely and so couldn’t have continued to be Sage and Founder), but he wanted the post slaves when they existed (unless they could pass for white like his kids) to be sent off to Haiti so that the US could be white and free … I suppose this Southern thing is more like the postcolonial guilt but mainly the thing is the Americans want to have no past, to be pure and good and free of thought … and they don’t like the minority views of people like Paine or Nat Turner and so on who said let’s get real. Americans are super indoctrinated to the idea that they came here to a land that was destined for them to be free in, that they were terribly oppressed in Europe and now they could just be. It’s not colonial guilt, it’s “pilgrim’s pride.” That’s the Yankee plan, and the US Army after beating the Confederates went West straightaway to clear out Indians. And some criticized all of this but many saw absolutely no problem with it.
“Land of the pilgrims’ pride, land where my fathers died, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.” [Uses the tune of God Save the King.]
“Oh beautiful, for pilgrims’ feet, whose stern impassioned stress / A thoroughfare for freedom beat, across the wilderness / … / America, America, God mend thine every flaw / Confirm thy soul in self-control, / Thy liberty in law!” [This is the song famous for the line “from sea to shining sea. It goes on later about “alabaster cities” which “gleam undimmed by human tears.” The country will reach at last, and I kid you not, “Thy whiter jubilee!”]
—
Blaming, I think I see. As in, the colleague I am calling the Blackguard gets under my skin because he sees all the problems I have not been able to fix and does not recognize that I do in fact see them as problems and that I have sacrificed a great deal trying to solve them.
For me part of it all is that, I must defend myself against various types of incursion far better than I do, but what I have not always understood is that the best way to do that is without concerning myself about whether or not the invader agrees with me on this. That way I do not have to discuss, but just act, which can be done quietly.
Pilgrim’s pride would not be quite ‘post colonial’ then. Just old fashionedly ideological.
—
For me part of it all is that, I must defend myself against various types of incursion far better than I do, but what I have not always understood is that the best way to do that is without concerning myself about whether or not the invader agrees with me on this. That way I do not have to discuss, but just act, which can be done quietly.
I think it is vital to see that we are no longer free to operate within a social framework that is consensual in approach. This is old-fashioned. Its time has come and gone — and hopefully one day such a more civilised mode of dealing with moral issues will be restored.
However, those who do try — due to some atavistic nobility that stems from a previous era — to attract attention to their issues that would be impartial and rational, will find that they are stymied not once but twice.
For in the first instance, people are not used to self-examination or moral questioning, and will therefore find your approach in trying to deal with moral issues rationally to be nothing short of quaint.
In the second instance, your approach will also be opportunistically misunderstood, as if a rational approach to morality were in itself an expression of unfair oneupmanship and “blaming”.
So what I say to that is that you do need to avoid that kind of an accusation as best you can. It is never really possible to avoid it, since the minute you try to enter into rational discourse with someone about a controversial moral issue, you will be accused, quite easily, of “blaming” others.
To avoid wasting your energies and becoming further stymied because of others cultural limitations, the best thing to do is to sidestep this whole process altogether.
That means that you DO need to become much more reliant upon the accuracy of your own judgements (no more waiting to bring various things into a public forum, to decide). Also , once you have decided what is right or wrong about a situation, you need to immediately follow through, for your own personal satisfaction, (and for the sake of restoring some sense of freedom and value to the world order), with ‘reciprocation’
I highly recommend this approach for behaviourstically training others.
This is spot on, I am quite sure. Shocking, but true. And it is funny that I am old fashioned, but also true. I will figure out how to implement.
P.S. It’s like the idea I heard from some witches and wizards once in Oregon. Stop thinking about doing what’s “right,” and just start doing your will.
Genealogy of Morals came today. I may not read until I get on the plane, because I am behind at work, have to catch up. But I have it.
I don’t think it is necessary to stop thinking about what is right. I think it is very pleasurable to think in these terms, if you can master it (and most ppl cannot). It also preserves your sanity to think in quite this way.
(Actually I think that those who do not do so are often those who have been guilty of misreading Nietzsche. They think “let me just exert my will in this situation”. But in honour of what, and on the basis of what? Exert you will in a vacuum if you like, and good luck to you. It is entirely meaningless, independent of any moral discourse.)
All I am saying is that you need to put in for a promotion. You are no longer an attorney. You go immediately to the level of judge.
Circumstances demand it.
This is all stuff I got from Nietzsche — that the “higher man”, which is the noble type of yore (and still is with us to some degree), who would like to argue his case in a rational forum, is passing away, because of “democratic ideals”.
(“Democratic ideals” means in this sense what has already been discussed on this blog — that is, the idea that everyone has an opinion, and each opinion is worth the same as any other opinion. You can guess at the kind of cultural ramifications of this kind of logic.)
So the “higher man” must be replaced by the “overman”. That is a person who is able to become stronger than the “higher man”, rather than having become weakened by the circumstances of the democratic ideals.
How does one do that?
According to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, one must past through three stages — the first being the heavy-minded studious stage, the second being a destructive (what I have termed “shamanistic”) stage, and the third stage of one’s personal evolution is when one is able to become the source of one’s own authority, as “a child” or a “self-revolving wheel”. The final stage of evolution from higher man to overman is what you must aim for.
Promotion, straight to judge, circumstances, you are *quite* right.
Doing what’s right — of course, unlike those witches, if I do my will it will be in concordance with what I decide is right. But it won’t be put up to a group decision, because then “what’s right” is some kind of common denominator or path of least resistance.
Child or self revolving wheel — yes, this is where I’m aiming.
***
My friend who taught me to use the casting net also says he will teach me to shoot.