I have hidden the post about my article because when I googled for more material for it, I got that post. Thank you for your comments, everyone, they were extremely helpful! I am replacing the post with a story of my day so far in that Brazilian land, where I am living in a working class neighborhood with an absolutely spectacular view of the bay.
I woke up at ten — late, I know, but I had stayed up until two. Cocks were still weakly crowing. I did some yoga exercises and made coffee, and then came back upstairs and did some work. I tinkered with my piece, ordered books for it, rearranged notes, read articles, thought, and wrote two sentences. Sent a progress report to the editor. Put off other professionally related e-mail.
Now I was ready for my program: go to the beach, come home, then take a bus downtown, get money, come back, buy groceries, and be home by dark to wait for the electrician, but I realized it was already four. There was no hope of completing my program so I decided I would wait until tomorrow to go downtown. Instead of the beach and the voyage I would and take a stroll up to the famous neighborhood church, where I have been too busy to go this week. Then I would buy the groceries I could with the money I have.
This walk takes about fifteen minutes and there are nice views of the bay and the upper city along the way. The church is prettier than I remembered, and the square seems positively metropolitan because of all the souvenir shops. Outside the church door I tried to buy a fairly large ebony figa and a Iansan necklace from an nice old man without legs. I ended up with quite a few additional articles because he overcharged me and I didn’t object, figuring I could afford it and he needed the money. My lagniappe was thus larger than my purchase.
Then I strolled back down the hill and went to a food market next door to the one I have been going to and slightly better. I had already spent half my grocery money so I cut out the items that are bad for you, but that I like. These include German-Brazilian beer, meat, dried meat, and cheese from Minas Gerais. I did buy a kilo of black beans, a liter of tomato pulp, and a bottle of hot sauce.
Coming out of the store I realized I was hungry and had hardly eaten all day. I bought a shrimp laden acarajé from a baiana on the corner, whom everyone else called “my beautiful Negress” but I called “Ma’am.” It was an excellent acarajé, larger, fluffier, and less greasy than any I’ve bought on the street anywhere else. To eat it I sat on a little plastic stool next to the stall. These baianas sell acarajé as a religious activity, you know. They have to make the foods of the gods readily available at reasonable prices. The price of this acarajé was $2.
At home I put the groceries away. Out of curiosity I tasted the new brands of coconut yogurt and passion fruit juice. Now I am waiting for the electrician and should be getting back to work. I feel I should cook something, and I know I should call my friend to test my Brazilian cell phone. I wish I had some of that German-Brazilian beer or — now I know — a caipirinha! I will have to buy some distilled fresh sugar cane juice (nothing to do with rum, which is derived from molasses) and make some of those. What I would like to do is take another walk along the quai and then watch a Brazilian soap opera, but I am waiting for the electrician, and only after he comes will the television work.
This was a quiet day but I noticed it was an exotic day.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Yesterday, I put some rather superior clothing on, leapt forth onto a train, (despising the second leg of the train journey as the vehicle was crowded, with standing room only). Proceedingly, I leapt off said train at an upper crust area called Subiaco, and marched forth unto the Witch’s Cauldron, a local eating establishment. Thereupon, having already imbibed one glass of white (before I had departed), and feeling generally woozy from pollen intoxication (which is my lot this time of the year, and used to lead to me driving through red traffic lights in December, when I was a less experienced driver than I am today) I underwent severe affliction from the witch and her magicalness. She flew from the roof, along with a spider, perched on her broomstick, and I proceeded to come to terms with the various mirrors, or the appearance of mirrors (where there were none), as I sheltered behind dark glasses, eyes slightly watering.
Sitting on booth seats, I noticed “windows” either side of me, which turned out not to be of glass, but air. In fact there were not windows there at all, but the mirroring reflections from my sunglasses had made them seem so. Not only that, but where I had imagined there to be no glass, not even a mirror, I suddenly saw my own visage gazing back at me, from fifteen metres away. There I was. Suck Magick did the witch wreak on me in my despairing hour. However, the steak and sauvignon blanc were to my liking.
The restaurant looks marvelous. What was the occasion?
(I just realized — we’re on the same schedule of seasons again, now that I’m in the southern hemisphere again.)
The electrician has not arrived and I am giving up on him for the day.
I think the occasion must have been the anniversary of Mike’s arrival here, nine years ago.
http://www.villamaria.co.nz/Our-wines/White-Wines/Sauvignon-Blanc/default.aspx
That looks fantastic, I wish I had some right now!
It’s strangely fruity, like passionfruit
I just had a short nap, (late to bed last night), and woke up reflecting more on the nature of the lizard brain. I think the whole key is that it tends towards pathology when it functions alone, but towards creativity when harnessed by the higher mind’s faculties.
One thing I am spectulating about (and there are good theoretical reasons for this) is that the lizard brain has to do with envisioning wholeness. In fact, this may be behind its projective mechanism. It unreasoningly fills in the gaps that are missing with empirical evidence — especially in terms of that hoary chestnut issue of “identity”. So where as we, as human beings, do not embody anything like an internally consistent or even self-consistent identity, a lot of the time, lizard brain, with its primitive (but also “artistic”) consciousness posits that we do.
Lizard brain sees wholeness, then, where none empirically exists — and it is just a step away, in that case, from positing “essences”.
You can imagine, therefore, what it means when lizard brain becomes unhinged from the higher mind — as is sometimes inclined to happen, especially with people, or even whole communities, under stress.
In other words, essences are projected, and imagined to pertain to individuals or groups “out there” when particular communities are under stress. This is a case of seeing self-consistency in others (a kind of “wholeness” where there in fact isn’t any). In fact, whole groups — such as “women” or “[insert ethnicity here]” — can be seen as sharing the same essence, according to this vision, making them into some kind of self-consistent whole.
So much for the pathological side of lizard brain. I insist, however, that it is very wrong (and also pathological) to try to divorce ourselves from a functioning part of our brains. It is difficult to realise that we must work alongside lizard brain, because we are often trained to think it terms of purity and impurity, and therefore in terms on excising whole putatively “negative” aspects of ourselves, when the proper path is towards integrating them.
It has suddenly struck me how the lizard brain types get you sucked in to playing their game and conforming to their wishes. They employ your own lizard brain against you, in its artistic (non-pathological) drives to see them (the pathological lizard brain types) as ‘a whole’. Wanting to perceive the other in this way (as a whole being) is not only creative and generous, but also has to do with our will to power, for we desire to “see” the other in order to enjoy him, but also to conquer him through our knowledge. We desire this form of relating (non-pathologically) because it is pleasurable.
But this is how the pathological lizard brains get us sucked in. I think that deep down, they know that they are not a whole, and that they can never be a whole person (in the different sense of being satisfied with their own inner resources, as the basis for an inward sense of identity, that doesn’t rely upon others to “make it complete/true”). Somehow they manage to get us to engage with them — with our idea of them — by being disruptive, and by by drawing attention to themselves. And somehow by giving them our attention, we create an image of their wholeness in our minds that the pathological ones can enjoy and feel gratified with. (Well, we all do this to some degree — try to live our lives through the perceptions of others — but I am talking about cases where people are extremely disruptive, and why that is.)
There are obviously some loose ends to all of this, for instance, concerning why the pathological ones cannot generate their own satisfying sense of wholeness, since they rely so strongly on the lizard brain for everything. It seems that what they lack is an emotional life that is in any way nourishing.
“They employ your own lizard brain against you, in its artistic (non-pathological) drives to see them (the pathological lizard brain types) as ‘a whole’. Wanting to perceive the other in this way (as a whole being) is not only creative and generous, but also has to do with our will to power, for we desire to “see” the other in order to enjoy him, but also to conquer him through our knowledge.”
YES. That (the whole thing) is very astute. I will reread / think about this.
I really believe it is the whole thing, from my experience.
And I believe they cannot see that they are asking more from us than would be reasonably expected for a person to give.
They think that they are giving us “their performance” and therefore they only deserve to have our bestowal of their identities to them as a whole. But it is NOT tit for tat. There is far more to lose in our engaging with them than there is for them to create some disruption and “perform”. They are seeking to take and seeking to have us give to them, although they cannot see it that way.
Ps– I think this also explains why I failed at middle school teaching. I was too inclined to see the individuals as a whole (which is not to say I understood them in any kind of personal way, but I was inclined to press them towards expressing a quality of selfhood that was more than they were capable of being –ie. more genuinely integrated).
If you notice how the teachers in Western schools “manage” the students, it is by viewing them only empirically. They do not see any of the individuals in their classes as a whole, but rather in terms of discrete and analytically divided separate “behaviours”. That way they stay above what can often be a pathological neediness.
Only aristocrats deserve to see other aristocrats as a whole. The rest need to be perceived as divided and partitioned for our own safety.
I suppose you are right. Alack…
I mean that lizard brain is synthetic and simplifying in its operations, whereas the higher mind (neo-cortex) is analytical and thinks in terms of multiplicities. The way of “behavioural management” in Western schools seems to involve disavowing the reality of lizard brain in its entirety, and so dividing the individual into a higher cortex “multiplicity”, without any underlying unity to him or her. That way, behaviour can be controlled, without falling into the seductions and traps set by the students’ lizard brains.
—————-
Nietzsche’s writing favours the lizard brain, however. I would argue, though, that he favours an INTEGRATED lizard brain/higher mind.
Check out the following and its reference to simplicity versus multiplicity:
When I lay asleep, then did a sheep eat at the ivy-wreath on my head,–it ate, and said thereby: “Zarathustra is no longer a scholar.”
It said this, and went away clumsily and proudly. A child told it to me.
I like to lie here where the children play, beside the ruined wall, among thistles and red poppies.
A scholar am I still to the children, and also to the thistles and red poppies. Innocent are they, even in their wickedness.
But to the sheep I am no longer a scholar: so willeth my lot–blessings upon it!
For this is the truth: I have departed from the house of the scholars, and the door have I also slammed behind me.
Too long did my soul sit hungry at their table: not like them have I got the knack of investigating, as the knack of nut-cracking.
Freedom do I love, and the air over fresh soil; rather would I sleep on oxskins than on their honours and dignities.
I am too hot and scorched with mine own thought: often is it ready to take away my breath. Then have I to go into the open air, and away from all dusty rooms.
But they sit cool in the cool shade: they want in everything to be merely spectators, and they avoid sitting where the sun burneth on the steps.
Like those who stand in the street and gape at the passers-by: thus do they also wait, and gape at the thoughts which others have thought.
Should one lay hold of them, then do they raise a dust like flour-sacks, and involuntarily: but who would divine that their dust came from corn, and from the yellow delight of the summer fields?
When they give themselves out as wise, then do their petty sayings and truths chill me: in their wisdom there is often an odour as if it came from the swamp; and verily, I have even heard the frog croak in it!
Clever are they–they have dexterous fingers: what doth MY simplicity pretend to beside their multiplicity! All threading and knitting and weaving do their fingers understand: thus do they make the hose of the spirit!
“But they sit cool in the cool shade: they want in everything to be merely spectators, and they avoid sitting where the sun burneth on the steps.”
HA! As I walked up to that church today, where I first went in 1985, I was thinking: a regular professor would be here for the first time and be with a guide and would write an article about it tomorrow.
“And I believe they cannot see that they are asking more from us than would be reasonably expected for a person to give.”
This I *know* is true, from my experience.
haha. they like to play it safe, it seems, these regular professors.
really I received a certain amount of flack through taking an experiential approach to my thesis, as I did. I could have received much worse, but even so, I would have thought that not being afraid to make an error in order to progress in learning would be a good thing. But the good professors, they do fright. [Expression from a Vanuatu church service that Mike and I attended: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and me no fright.”]
Yes, I knew they’d “fright” about that.
The reason for it in the case of these theses is that so very many students are so much more flaky than you can even know. That’s why everyone says to be very conservative and finish fast … those who have other ideas really are, 90% of the time, people more like our Mark, whom one shouldn’t trust with their wildish ideas.
I still think that if I had been in my originative culture, which knew me better nobody would have fright. It’s the frontier mentality and all that — you were simply expected to take on more, to express black humour about it, and to exceed expectations.
But once again, that is an issue of class. I was brought up to rely on myself and to believe that I deserved others’ implicit trust.
But self-reliance, as well as expectations of deserving others implicit trust are out of date today, unfortunately. We are all of a lower caste.
My bet is that they have as many conservative faculty, and students with out-there ideas they aren’t entirely prepared to have, at the U of Z as anywhere else!
Yes, the U of Z is no doubt also part of Modernity. But I was not brought up as part of it.
Maybe I’m being too impersonal, not attributing enough to my personal idiosyncracies, but I think I am right. I have values in me that are out of step with the current order — as do you!
How did they get there? I think they came into us through a historical current, rather than through our genes. There they are, and they are out of step with Modernity and there is little we can do about that.
Well this is also what a friend here said today.
You have to be somewhere where you do not feel like your values are at odds with everybody else’s — even if your lost apparent status and earn less money. It is so important not to have thoughts whereby you are always second guessing yourself, or always having to undergo an initiation where you are awash with your own contempt for those around you. Both are degrading and horrible experiences.
It is funny — said friend here also said this, saying it was good to see me, because here (like Louisiana) is at odds with her values.
Many of us are so constituted that there is an overlap between two cultures or more, within us.
Much of my aesthetic sense — which is to say, much of my morality — is determined by something colonial/British. I must admit (and be quite clear about it, too) that I do not have any moral position as such apart from my aesthetic sense. I find certain things ugly — some inexplicably so — for instance, the idea that power has to be expressed with force, in order to be believable. Obviously, my attitude here is a little strange, and some might say “unrealistic”, because quite patently, power everywhere is always backed up by force. Nonetheless, I despise the direct expression of force in personal relations with me. I consider it superfluous, excessive, unnecessary: if someone wants something from me, they ought to state directly what it is, and then I will consider it, and more than likely comply with their request or needs. But going directly to a mechanistic level of power, in order to prise something from me takes everything away from the relationship, which can no longer be based on trust. This seems like a very low level of thinking to me, so much so that I can’t even imagine what is going on in the head of somebody who reasons in this way. Do they still expect to have a relationship with me, after they have used force? They should not expect it at all, and yet naively, they do seem to.
Reading this post was like taking a vacation to a whole other place in the middle of the day–thanks!
O good, so it is fun! I think it’s pretty fun. I forgot to put in that in the morning I also negotiated with the caretaker for a plumber and an electrician. He has just had two teeth pulled so he was in pain and was hard to understand talking. As of this evening he is on antibiotics, thank God.
Jennifer – Very a propos for today.
My adventure.
I was going to leave my car at the airport in N.O. because my return flight from here gets in at midnight. It takes over an hour to drive home and all options at midnight are expensive, so leaving car in airport discount parking for 27 days was an expensive option but the one I chose.
Then one of my exes, one who is supposedly friendly, wanted to go to NO by means other than driving, and it so worked out that if he picked my car up from the airport and took it to my house, it would benefit him and save me cash.
The catch was my getting home, which was the whole point of taking my car to the airport. He swore he didn’t mind coming to get me. I doubted it and said are you sure are you sure many times, because if not I don’t want any surprises, and I do want to get home that night as opposed to, say, take a cab into N.O. and get a room (I refuse to arrive at friends’ houses to crash at midnight) and take the bus home the next day. He said yes yes, do not worry.
Then yesterday I was here in the house negotiating with the caretaker for a plumber and an electrician (it’s a wobbly Brazilian house and things do go wrong) and a message comes from him — let’s go to a MOTEL in KENNER (yuck) that night! I want a place to rest before coming to get you, especially if your plane is late, and we can go home the next day!
I felt bad. He is right, of course, my plane could be delayed and he could get stuck waiting in the airport, but that was why I had been asking are you sure are you sure … and now here he is with a key to my car and a letter saying he has my permission to use it, and he is saying we have to go to a motel!
I felt lizard like anger. I do not want to go to a motel but I also understand that in the circumstances having a room might not be a bad thing for him if my plane is late. But that was something to have thought of while I was asking, before leaving, are you sure are you sure?
So I answered, while trying to gather my thoughts, well, I see why you want this.
So then I gather my thoughts but there is already a new message and it is the motel reservation with confirmation number and the information that he is going to see family for six days and will be off line.
!!!
So I stress all evening and try to think of what I would like to do in these circumstances and how I will put this politely yet firmly. And e-mail is useless since he is gone. (That was why I wished I had some of that NZ wine. I didn’t have a drop in the house and it was too late to shop, I’d have had to go to a bar and the bars in this ‘hood are unsafe I am sure.)
So today I take a bus across town to where you can make international phone calls, in one of those calling center places, and call him on his cell phone.
I really expected he’d say OK, the room can be backup and no I am not doing this as a way to put you in the awkward position of sleeping with me; our plan can still be to go home.
But in reality he said, OK, I will take your car to the airport parking earlier in the day and leave it. Then you call me to find out where I have left it.
Well. That still makes me indebted to him for taking the car back to the airport, and it leaves the car in his possession, and leaves him in control of me since I have to call him to find out where my car is. But he wouldn’t say anything else and the call was costing about an Australian dollar every minute, so I rang off and breathed.
Called again and said look, I would much rather rent a car than be dependent upon getting in touch with you and then having to look for my car in a place I didn’t park it myself. He said this was all he was willing to do, that it was as far as he would go, he was definitely going to take my car back to the airport and I was going to have to call him and find it.
Rang off and breathed. Called again. Said: The. minute. you. get. home. from. this. trip. you. go. to. my. house. and. give. the. key. of. the. car. to. my. housesitter. who. will. be. expecting. it. And so finally he said OK.
It was an excruciating day and the contrast between how I felt (horrible) and what the air was like and the look of the city and bay and boats (wonderful) was very striking.
THE POINT: while all this was happening, what I was really observing was my lizard brain. I was in utter fight or flight mode because this person had my car, was preventing me from getting to my house, and trying to detour me to a motel. I am not sure I used the lizard brain very well or got any decent control of it but it did cause me to keep fighting until I won.
*And* I had also had to change money since things will be closed, so I had my passport and all this cash in a little cloth bag so it would look like nothing, and I was riding crowded buses in bad neighborhoods, and somebody had been held up I think at gunpoint earlier in the day on my street, and I was still looking normal and didn’t lose a thing. And then I ate some African okra delight on a little stool on a street corner cool as a cucumber, added a whole load of groceries to my shoulders, and walked on home in the dark, where the little girl was waiting with a fresh pile of my clothes her mother had washed. And she drank passion fruit juice and said it was sour, and I walked her home because it was dark and so I could pay her mother, and all these things happened nicely and normally while I had full on R complex and adrenalin and blood pressure. And all of that was about this man in Louisiana who had my car and wanted to bar me from my house and take me to a motel.
And I was noticing this and how ridiculous it was and realizing how clever he is, he can get straight to the R complex.
Interesting. Back to you shortly.
It sounds like you coped admirably well!
He was trying to use your survival mentality against you, but you were aware enough of it (focused) to resist. That implies that you are functioning at a higher level of consciousness than most people can.
Very good.
Well, thanks! Hilariously, this is once again what my local friend said.
I am still hopping mad at this man, though. I should never have let him get mixed up in this trip. He really did fool me with the promises to pick me up, I fell for it, all the other options are OK and I would have been fine with them initially, but the repeated I’ll pick you up and take you home, I don’t mind, really, were a perfect trap. To then dump on me like this.
You won. Let life move on. Next episode of it could be equally amusing, and you will know yourself better to boot.
I’m sure you’re right. I’m obsessing because it is hard to tell whether I should exile him. He could have decided to exile me though, so the die may be case, what me worry?
He seems to have clearly spelt out his position in relation to you, in his attempt to use manipulation to get you where you do not want to be.
Part of using the lizard brain in an integrative (non-pathological) way is to acknowledge the political relationships that it perceives – ie. don’t forget them.
You should take into account this lizard brain knowledge (concerning his intention to deceive and manipulate) in every future interaction with him. Don’t forget it (although he will want you to; and will try to smooth the situation over) — and the relationship will take its natural course. The most likely result is that you will have nothing more to do with the character. But don’t force the situation. Just keep in mind what you now know, as if it were a fundamental truth of the relationship, and let things take their natural course.
Shamanism is about perceiving, not “doing”. We are taught, however, to “do” — to act decisively, but this tends to put us in a quandry where we are under a lot of stress to arbitrate. As a result our actions and their consequences often feel arbitrary, too.
With regard to most relationships, there will be aspects to a person that we like, and aspects that we do not like, or cannot even stand.
To have to arbitrate under those circumstance is difficult, not to mention extremely stressful. If we cut off a person for good just because they behaved in some way negatively towards us, we are cutting ourselves off from their good behaviour, too.
All of these factors to consider weight heavily on the higher mind.
But there is less of burden when the two minds are integrated. In that case, instead of judging as such one “waits”, for a situation to resolve itself. But one does not wait passively. Rather one resolves to include all of one’s knowledge in one’s future interactions, and never to forget.
This is not the same, at all, as holding something over someone or accusing them of being guilty. If anything it is a potentially conciliatory stance, although its correct definition is “empty”.
In effect, one leaves an open space for the other party to potentially convict himself further, or to make amends.
Believe me, your silence and “non-action” will put pressure on him to act — and to further reveal himself for what he is.
“He seems to have clearly spelt out his position in relation to you, in his attempt to use manipulation to get you where you do not want to be.”
Absolutely.
And excellent instructions. I keep thinking I have to negotiate, get through, and it is so futile (and it may also be some pointless desire to be recognized as “right”).
(and it may also be some pointless desire to be recognized as “right”).
Women are never “right”. And it is one of the main sources of patriarchal sadism to get the little woman to steam herself up trying to prove that she is “right” when the whole system militates against her ever being found to be right. Most patriarchs find that really, really funny: “You’re so sexy when you’re angry!”
So there’s no point in being “right” on the patriarchy’s terms. But there IS a lot of point in being right on one’s own terms.
You are so right.
And you are also correct about rightness! 🙂
I’m about to paste in an e-mail I wrote and did not send. Then I’ll paste in the e-mail I actually sent. Then I’ll bet you’ll tell me the one I actually sent was better.
NOT SENT:
Dear.
I didn’t want to have you drive down earlier in the day and leave the car because it would have kept me in a dependent position while unnecessarily inconveniencing you. Looking for the car alone at midnight in a place I hadn’t left it myself was not a plan I would have made for myself.
I’m sorry I sent that first, ambivalent response to your query about staying in Kenner. I was a little stunned to receive it and I wanted to gather my thoughts. I shouldn’t have said anything until I had done so, and I am sorry. My answer, though, would have been the one I went into town the next day to phone to you — if you’ve got cold feet, leave the car at home and let me rent one.
The possibility of my flight being late was one of the reasons I had thought it best just to leave my car there. It was one of the reasons I kept asking if you were really sure you wanted to come get me. I had said repeatedly that I wanted to come right home from the airport, and I do always dodge sharing rooms and beds.
Knowing you knew these things it seemed a low blow to make the suggestion when I was already here, you already had the car, and you were on your way off line for six days.
The offer to come and pick me up was unrealistically generous, I know, a kind gesture; I ought to have allowed it to remain that, a kind gesture, and I am sorry for that.
Looking back on the past today, letting the sun and islands guide me to think about how I’d like to live this year, I realized I have too often allowed myself to be placed in positions vis-a-vis you that made me uncomfortable. It’s painful for me and for you too, since I end up yelping and squirming my way out.
I am still your friend, and I still appreciate your friendship, but I will protect myself, and thus you, from these awkward situations better from now on.
Best.
EMAIL ACTUALLY SENT:
Dear Y (him) and X (housesitter),
There is a letter in the glove compartment of my car saying Y has permission to use it until January 9.
Permission is revoked as of 12/23/09, as Y knows, but I am 7000 kilometers away and I want to say so in writing, as explicit as the letter.
The car is parked in my garage and Y has promised to deliver the key to X when he returns to Our Town from Next State December 29.
I take this promise seriously and I would like confirmation of its fulfillment.
Thanks to you both, and Merry Christmas.
P.S. I dated this man briefly twice, in 2002 and 2007.
In 2002 I thought darkly that he was emotionally abusive in some vague way I could not define. In 2007 he courted me on the rebound from my truly emotionally abusive ex, and seemed wonderful initially, by contrast — until he didn’t, which happened soon. But we were friends before 2002 and have been sort of like cousins since 2007.
I remember phoning the blogger Changeseeker during the 2007 episode, concerned about his behavior, and she said I had fallen into another abusive relationship after just escaping one, and that it was a bad pattern, and that if I realized this was an abusive relationship, which I did, I should get out, so I did.
But it must have turned into an abusive friendship.
I notice I keep writing him these imaginary letters because I am trying to cajole him into not being abusive (Kathmandu had the right word, “encroaching”), to press the right button so he will turn out to be truly nice.
I notice I am usually on edge around him in some small way and that I often feel insecure, as though I were not completely safe — and I realize it is because I am on guard against the dismissing and diminishing things he says, and overly eager for the positive things.
(The best time we had lately was drinking wine with, precisely, my house sitter. They had never met and they got along, and he was expansive and pleasant, and I didn’t have to manage anything. We all commented on what a great time it had been but I knew it was because he was on good behavior.)
I remember writing letter after letter to my mean X, trying to talk him into being nice because I didn’t think I had the right to break up and I needed him to be nicer.
I notice myself thinking I have to fix the present situation too.
I remember that the only way I fixed the situation with my mean ex was to break up, stay broken up, not negotiate, and send legal memos when he wouldn’t stay away.
I notice that this time, I first sent wheedling e-mails to this man, saying please can we not go to a motel, please can we go home. I notice that this got me in touch with how outraged I was, which prompted me to phone and say give my car key back. I notice that just the fact that I was so upset does not mean I am unbalanced, it means that he had really upset me. I notice that I was intimidated by his request to go to that motel. I notice that I am intimidated by him in lots of ways somehow.
I notice that since I demanded the key back I have wrote one polite e-mail thanking him for promising it. I wrote another short mail acknowledging the text messages he had sent me, and thanking him for being in touch, but not discussing their content. I wrote a third, short, legalistic e-mail revoking permission to use the car.
I have also written two long, conciliatory mails that I have posted here rather than send. This is because they are mostly to make me feel better; I don’t really want any actual response of the kind he might really give. Yes I want him to come forth and be nice but I don’t want to have to get him to do it, I want him to want to do it if he wants to.
I am proud that I have not sent these mails. I think they would just lay me open to more of the same.
I think it is a *bad* idea to “use the I language.” What I really want to say is a more extensive version of what I said on the phone, which was:
WE HAD A DEAL; YOU RENEGED ON IT; THE DEAL IS THEREFORE OVER; GIVE ME BACK MY CAR.
I don’t really want any actual response of the kind he might really give.
This is a such a core point. To realise that you do not want the kind of response that your enemies/abusers could give is a real sign of liberation. What it means is that you have had the courage to see them as a whole, which means you were able to sacrifice your wishful thinking and your neediness, in order to transcend them both! It is very shamanistic — not to be motivated by what we desire to see, but to risk seeing what is actually there.
I also notice I’ve been treating him as a member of the family, i.e. as someone who has to be there and so has to be managed.
I do want more adult friends in town than I have been able to find, and so I hope for the best. What he projects into me, and which drives me nuts, is the idea that I need his practical help much more than I do — an example being this ride from the airport.
The first time I dated him he was convinced I wanted to marry him for financial security. I remember vituperating into the telephone, “I don’t need money or a ring, I have an education and a job! All I need is warmth and ease, not this cold dismissiveness!”
And — I just realized this — what he alleged when he broke up with me was an inversion of that. He said he hadn’t fallen in love and wanted to give himself the opportunity to do so with someone else, but that he didn’t want to give up sex with me, did I mind?
I minded, yes, and it was very insulting, and I am well aware that my engagement with him since has been, in a sense, an attempt to get him to take that proposition back. But, aha: I hereby reject it myself! This has been a speech act! 🙂
NOTE TO SELF: The ride to airport idea was born the night we were drinking wine with she who is now my housesitter. And that night he propositioned me as we all separated, too. I brushed it off and had forgotten about it, but notice how interconnected it all is.
The second one is much better!
Here is a post on Zizek and Lacan.
my engagement with him since has been, in a sense, an attempt to get him to take that proposition back.
To “get him to take the proposition back” is actually impossible, for once something is spoken it cannot be taken back, and that is why we should beware of what we say to each other.
What you were trying to do is to employ the lizard brain’s faculty of “magical thinking” to erase his hurtful statement. You wanted to assert your own power, in opposition to his power, in this way, and thus make things even.
This fails, because it involved dichotomised thinking (ie. it involves not taking into sufficient account the empirical fact of his statement, as if he actually meant it, which he did).
I think all abusive relationships are based on the tendency of one party (or both) to try to get away with making the other party wear an abusive statement, without having the capacity/desire/wherewithal to respond. This gives the abusive party gratification at the lizard brain level — but it is immature thinking, as the pleasure one gets from abusing another is always shortlived. One needs to get one sugar hit after the other, and soon it wears down one’s health.
It can be hard to find someone who isn’t potentially abusive, but I think you might, with a bit of luck, if you start to tolerate abusiveness less.
When I met Mike online, I had a good instinct about his inner integrity — but of course, Mike sees himself as somewhat ‘shamanised’.
Very wise! And the fact that they need more and more hits of sugar, that they can’t be appeased but actually get worse over time, is extremely important to remember.
I’m sure I can (find) — in fact, the way I get all these abusive people (apart from the fact that I am convinced it is part and parcel of the culture in our particular town) hanging around is by not taking them seriously. My actual friends come from among the people I never made allowances for. I don’t mean didn’t empathize, tolerate minor foibles of, and so on, I mean didn’t decide to PROJECT into them the idea that I had to put up with crap from them!!!
the way I get all these abusive people (apart from the fact that I am convinced it is part and parcel of the culture in our particular town) hanging around is by not taking them seriously
I have also been guilty of this, and it was hugely to my detriment. There are people who play at being childish, ineffectual, passive and so on, and they do it because it is an effective mask for what they really hope to achieve. It is a mask for their will to power. Witness my sister on facebook, who can never take anything seriously, not family traumas, not global warming, not any aspect of knowledge itself. It’s all water off a duck’s back. But underneath, there is a deep inner corruption in relation to knowledge: she wishes to subvert it, to overthrow its power, so that she can feel superior to anyone who claims to know something.
Once again it is the lizard brain at work, putting on a mask of being helpless and effete to mask a very violent will to power.
We tolerate people like this because a certain kind of reasoning tells us they are harmless, but experience teaches otherwise.
Also, we can be sucked into the game because they cause us to feel superior to them, due to their displays of harmlessness, fickleness and stupidity. We overestimate our power in relation to them, when we rely upon pure reason. That plays into their game.
Really they are people of inferior minds or lazy who are trying to get power anyway, through an illegitimate route — and more than often, they succeed!
“We overestimate our power in relation to them, when we rely upon pure reason. That plays into their game.”
Laziness is key, too, I think. I believe I was raised by someone like this and taught I must mollify and could conceivably help cure them. I developed great reasoning powers out of self interest — to preserve sanity — but also a tendency to put up with them and amuse myself while doing so by trying to convert them to reason. It does indeed play right into their game — my mean ex was a true master at egging me on in this.
They are lazy and so they cannot invent their own games, but cast out a net for somebody to entertain them. Our frantic efforts to convert them to reason, so that we might be acknowledged by them as having value seems like a joke to them, because they are quite happy with their lot, really, and don’t aspire to know more than they already do. So they take up the role of sadist, and really enjoy it.
“so that we might be acknowledged by them as having value”
…what I primordially try to do, because of that parent who is also very abject.
The other thing about these people is, again, their mixture: they can be great, which makes them all the more confusing and powerful. My mean ex used to talk explicitly about using that mixture as a strategy.
On another comment up thread, on not taking them seriously, I note that with some really really minor abusers, people who I don’t think really want to be, I’ve realized rapidly and rationally that it was a choice between them and me: either I could cater to them, or I could participate in the world of health, but not both. Somehow the real abusers engulf me more, so I forget I don’t have to drag them along.
Hmm…
I used to feel very much as you described, also because of an abject parent. It makes you more sensitive to the abject qualities in others, so that you try to rescue them as a way of rescuing the parent, and so making everything right. It’s really a seeking after wholeness.
In my case, I was torn between exposing the abject parent and protecting the individual against further identification with their weaknesses. I was torn apart because of the bad behaviour.
What cured me was to realise that this world is far from perfect, and that just as I, myself, give up on trying to portray a perfect image, I can also give up on the need for the parental image to be perfect (redeemable).
I am still trying to resolve all the meanings and loose ends of this break I made with perfection.
Something has very much changed in my way of thinking. I am able to look upon most situations more or less as a sparring match, rather than as interactions which must be compelled to “go somewhere” or to have some underlying meaning to them that goes deeper than the exhange of positive and negative affects, which forms the interaction.
Key to this is that I no longer relate to persons according the their subject position in the structuralist dynamics of the whole society. Rather, I now see their actions and behaviour as if they were wholly independent of these aspects of social status and social character.
Overall, what this has led to has been an upgrading of my estimation of many women. There need be no special pleading on their behalf — many of them are indeed performing better than men are, in regards to standards of ethics, integrity, and sheer daring. That is apart from the fact that they also have much more against them.
I think in general I am moving from an idealistic position, with idealist axioms, towards a materialist’s perspective. Idealism (which is linked to patriarchy) has so little rewarded me, and punished me so often, that I can no longer subscribe to its perspectives. I have come to expect less than nothing from the system of values now in place, which I call the Patriarchy.
It seems to me that patriarchy keeps women in their places by making them desire perfection — and then making sure they cannot obtain it, because then they would cease to strive towards unreachable goals, and they would be free.
We simply cannot mend the world through any sort of idealism. Shamanism proposes another way — that we accept its brokeness, just as it is, and work with it as parts and pieces that will never wholly come together, but which offer sheer moments of delight, nonetheless.
Yes — I’ve actually always agreed with all of this (although must still reform such that my lizard brain doesn’t do the opposite) — hmmm.
And on that, I think it is because they instantly weaken you. My current housesitter calls it hypnosis. They use their combination of strength and weakness to catch you before you have time to reflect, and objectivity takes a back seat.
ok– I have a post on shamanism in moderation.
They do catch you out that way, but that is because you are seeking wholeness (you are in the thrall of a concept of life’s perfectability — that which a shaman loses upon facing death).
AHA I see.
paradoxically, we gain our wholeness as individual selves by embracing contingency. It seems like the wrong way to go, instinctively, down, instead of up, not trying to knit together a unity, but embracing the brokeness of everything. But one gets free of all sorts of ideological-emotional traps that way, and with an open mind, life can become more interesting.
I see that.
This X with whom I decided yesterday to cancel friendship (he doesn’t know it, he’ll just see it) says the same thing but it’s a strategy, in his case, to deflect any complaints. He says people aren’t wholes, so sometimes they’re one thing and sometimes another, so if people are upset at anything he does and so on, it’s just their mood.
He doesn’t say it so simply or directly.
Also though: on how these people catch you: they convince you you are crazy. My mean X was really blatant about this and I’ve had some other people be — parents, department chairs — but this guy more subtle at it. He says he’s very reasonable and sane, keeps saying so, he’s rational, he’s an engineer, and he does things that drive people nuts, and then he listens to their complaint and says I’m sorry you feel that way, let me know if there’s anything I can do — but he has also already let you know that the one thing he won’t do is what you’ve already asked.
I think the wholeness you get through becoming very, very aware of your lizard brain and that of everybody else is a genuine wholeness.
Right now I am just waking up, with the original plan being to run on the beach before dawn (the sun is already up).
I hope this makes sense.
I think there are many people who misread, for instance, Nietzsche and Bataille, as implying a kind of amoralism in the way your engineer friend seems to see the world: “People are not ‘whole’, so give them shit; pull the blinkers over their eyes and survive by being smarter than they.”
The thing is I have never not seen the manipulation, and it is foolhardy to try to manipulate someone who has their eyes open to you. I have seen it again and again, though. It’s not just a common patriarchal stance, but one used by authorities of all sorts, who will not speak directly.
The actual ability to see such manipulators as being foolhardy implies a natural spiritual superiority on the part of the one who actually sees, compared to the one who merely manipulates and imagines that nobody sees.
Also a real wholeness of mind and body (which is what shamanism means) frees your from the deterministic thinking that afflicts your friend.
A real seer does NOT need to say, “people are half blind and incomplete, therefore I will rob them.”
There is no obligation to draw such a negative conclusion about things. You could say, “People are incomplete, therefore they suffer,” (like the buddhists could say). Or, “people are incomplete, and they and I are different — I will have compassion for some and avoid others like the plague” (which is what a real seer would say.
I mean the spiritual inferiority of the would-be manipulators is spelt out by their compulsiveness — by the way in which they seem compelled to see the world in a certain way, and also compelled to exploit it.
There’s nothing very free or freeing about that.
It’s all compulsion.
But genuine shamanism is about freedom and insight.
Well this engineer friend thinks he’s doing the Buddhist or seer thing … but I see a lot of parallels with my mean X and I think this is just a cover.
But you’re right on what genuine shamanism is – even though I’m not really one, I can see it.
Well this engineer friend thinks he’s doing the Buddhist or seer thing … but I see a lot of parallels with my mean X and I think this is just a cover.
Well a lot of people have some insights into others and their consciousness. It’s very common to aim to have this basis for superiority. But most people who are like this would be better off without any insight at all. It just makes them worse.
It’s their compulsive aspect that brings them down. They may have insights into others, but no insights regarding themselves.
These are the very worst of people. They are somehow always “spiritual” in the way they see themselves. But actually their “spirituality” is just the search for means to be slightly superior through possessing AND EXPLOITING “insight”.
Now, I contend that shamanistic spirituality (for instance, in the case of Nietzsche himself) does not employ this kind of logic at all. All of his followers do so, since they are not shamanised.
Rather, the capacity *not* to act simply on the basis of what one “sees” (and more than not, only imagines that one sees) is the only sign of spiritual mastery. That is why not acting is a core principle of shamanism. There is no actual transcendence, otherwise, just an illusion of it.
*Exploiting* and having to act on knowledge, yes.
It reveals their actual lack of knowledge. Real knowledge also has to include self knowledge. To be unable to resist stimulii is, again and again, in Nietzsche, the sign of someone who has missed the boat. It’s inner weakness.
But, unfortunately, those who are superficially spiritual — which is not to say that they lack knowledge altogether — tend to confuse “passion” with compulsiveness. It is extremely common. They tell themselves that they are doing whatever they have to do — exploiting the weak, pursuing a relationship, converting others to their point of view — all because they are very passionate and deep, and because they are driven by their passion.
But they are driven by their compulsiveness.
That is in the end how they fail — it works for them for a while, but when it catches up with them, PUM!
Yes. So there is hope. We just need to stay out their ways to allow them to fail. Otherwise they use us a life-extensions, and carry on.
“life-extension” — that really is it.