It is not yet the weekend. We are not singing, or even writing real posts; we are only peeping. Peep! Pe-ep!
I am behind on a deadline and it is not because I am a Procrastinator with Poor Time Management, it is because I am so deeply trained to put my own priorities below those of passing vampires. I knew this already, of course, but I have only this week seen the contours of this matter as clearly as I do now … although I will not go into detail since I must get back to that deadlined project. Peep!
A question for you: what good things has the Obama administration done that a McCain administration would surely not have done? What terrible things would a McCain administration have surely done that the Obama administration has not and will not?
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Peep!
Peep! You really have to place yourself in the center of things. This is the thing I de-learned in Reeducation and that it is so hard to re-learn.
Peep!
I like it.
When George W. Bush was elected in 2000, I said to anyone who would listen that we’d be at war within a year. I sounded insane. But I was only off by a few months. While it sounds insane to say that McCain would have taken any opportunity to start a new military conflagration, e.g. in Iran, I nevertheless believe that to be true.
Obama repealed the global gag rule. Almost a year ago now, but I’m still clinging to it as A Good Thing. And no way in hell McCain woulda done that.
McCain admin would surely have barbecued McCain’s own grandma.
AHA, it’s true on Iran and also about the gag rule. Also, the Obama administration is less rabid on abstinence only education. So that is good, so far.
Peep!
I still repeat: one really must take one’s role in one’s as central but light. I am shocked to see that I _still_ expect myself to do the work of three people with my left hand while caring for a suicidal and irrational sick person with my right.
I am shocked to see how simple life is if one does not do that, and how guilty I feel if I don’t do it. I can hear them shouting, you are so selfish, so selfish, so selfish, so loud that it throws me against the wall. And me saying: but you _want_ me to do well in school; staying healthy to do the work and then doing the work is what it _takes_ … and then hearing them wail and cry and feeling it cut through me like knives. And feeling guilty toward the people in the real world I was disappointing, but being tied to my post … and then much later, being told it must be due to “denial” that I was so sane, it couldn’t be that I had maintained sanity or found windows of sanity or gotten over anything, it had to be “denial,” and I had to experience all of that again.
All of those people were really crazy and I am irritated that I ever tried to compromise with them.
Peep!
Once again: you really, really do have to be able / willing / dare to care for yourself and see yourself as an adult. In Education one was allowed to do that, but not in my first education or in Reeducation.
It is why I like foreign countries and want a different academic field, because I associate where I have been with not being allowed to be an adult or to respect myself or to trust myself or to anything — it has always seemed that the first priority is to take abuse. As I keep explaining, volunteering for that is the alternative to volunteering for the death penalty, so of course one volunteers for the abuse. The whole point is to try to stay as unruined as possible, for later.
The thing is that that is poor training for later, because later has been here for quite a while.
This is my main neurosis and I cannot believe any Reeducators did not understand it, I think it is quite common.
P.S. and I repeat: this thing of putting other peoples’ goals first, it has happened to me again and again since Reeducation and I have not understood it at a deep enough level, and I understand it at last.
And: because of that I haven’t felt so calm as now in about 19 years. It is really amazing.
I’ve been thinking about how conformity to systems of power can seem to produce an internal resonance in the mnd that one might associate with having discovered a ‘mystical truth’. Some people — perhaps even most people — would counsel you to regress for the reason that they have themselves developed an internal association between the practice of regression and feeling that they have encountered ‘truth itself’.
I think it’s true. But I think I should do something shamanic. It’s all quite mundane, it’s just about being raised in an alcoholic atmosphere, but I keep continuing to understand how deep that is and how it fits in which various other things like capitalism and patriarchy, and why that all cements things together in a certain way.
The shamanic solution, I find, is effective. It removes the neuroses that have been inculcated, but it also makes one more “impersonal”. The process of facing one’s demons through a descent into ‘immanence’ (a regressive movement) is difficult, however. It needs time, and it feels like a black rain drumming on one’s head. During this time, everybody’s behaviour seems to impact on one too severely, and one is ultra-sensitive to every little shift in power dynamics. This is something I believe I went through recently — as early as 8 months ago. One has to have a lot of strength of body, not just strength of mind, to emerge from a shamanic regression. The danger is that one stays in this regressed mode, and becomes mad. If one’s physical energy levels are low, one should beware.
The curative effect of shamanic regression is that one acquires a certain detachment from one’s sense of cultural identity — ie. one is better able to see its contingent nature; how it is wrapped up within power relationships that were not of its own making. This intellectual and emotional transcendence is the curative property of shamanism, which is enabled by experiencing a period of time locked into a state of immanence. But to lose one’s neuroses can mean a loss of a major source of entertainment:
And when you say, “I no longer have a conscience in common with you,” then it will be a grief and a pain.
Lo, that same conscience created that pain; and the last gleam of that conscience still glows on your affliction.
But you would go the way of your affliction, which is the way to yourself? Then show me your right and your strength to do so!
Are you a new strength and a new right? A first motion? A self-rolling wheel? Can you even compel the stars to revolve around you?
Alas! there is so much lusting for loftiness! There are so many convulsions of the ambitious! Show me that you are not a lusting and ambitious one!
Alas! there are so many great thoughts that do nothing more than the bellows: they inflate, and make emptier than ever.
Free, do you call yourself? Then I would hear your ruling thought, and not merely that you have escaped from a yoke.
Are you one of those who had the right to escape from a yoke? Many a one has cast away his last worth when he has cast away his servitude.
http://praxeology.net/zara2.htm
Yes. Like the Zizek video, this merits more meditation.
It is odd, I really thought I had done this shamanic thing 12 or 13 years ago. It may not have been strong enough to withstand Louisiana.
I think we all need to do it again, every so often, because it is natural to become interpellated by every new situation and its power dynamics.
Peep!
I’m just going to keep peep!ing, because it’s wonderful and makes things better.
And of course, on more serious things, you’re right as usual – and I must remember to be elated that my grad program is not Reeducating me. I don’t know why I’m always surprised to find empathy and respect emanating from the important people in my sphere, but whatever it is, I am glad for it and must remember to be more consciously glad.
(Peep!)
Peep! Yes, my graduate program did that, too, but not so all my jobs, and not Reeducation. Currently I have a better situation, and I am amazed and grateful. Peep!
Doing a shamanistic renewal again, yes. Peep!
Peeping really is fun.
Peep. I am inhabiting myself. In order to write this paper I had to inhabit myself. I accuse myself of not concentrating well enough on work, not starting soon enough, but the problem is actually that I do not inhabit myself, I expect myself to be myself without inhabiting myself or to be myself without being. This is very interesting (to me) and instructive (to me). Peep!
“A question for you: what good things has the Obama administration done that a McCain administration would surely not have done? What terrible things would a McCain administration have surely done that the Obama administration has not and will not?”
Conversely, what bad things has the Obama administration done that a McCain administration would surely not have done? What good things would a McCain administration have surely done that the Obama administration has and will not?
Answering the first question, I think Obama has been more diplomatic than John McCain would have been, especially toward Iran. Unfortunately, the war in Afghanistan continues, but we should’ve expected that with either Obama or McCain.
To the second question (and third) — none, and none, I think. And yes, the Iran situation would have been worse. I also think that despite everything, Obama’s emphasis on civility and rational discourse, and proper English, and just being so much more socially acceptable than Bush, does the country a lot of psychic good. People are more relaxed, I find.
Meanwhile, peep! You really do have to individuate and face fear. In Reeducation I learned that it was “denial” to be courageous. But you have to be yourself, inhabit yourself. I wasn’t wrong about that — even if Reeducation taught me to be incredibly anxious about it.
Peep! Writing really does take a long time and a lot of work, and you really do have to feel legitimate about yourself to do it. I find it impossible to do if I am questioning every fiber of my being, and also if I am not taking care of my health. Peep, peep, peep!